Keyte,  John  Charles,  1875- 
In  China  now 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/inchinanowchinasOOkeyt 


The  Altar  of  Heaven,  Peking 

The  bavilion  in  which  the  Ember  or  would  keeb  viril  the  n  ipht  before  offering  to  Shansr-ti  the  “  Rubrpme  Ruler 


'  ?/■„.  \ 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


CHINA’S  NEED  AND  THE 
CHRISTIAN  CONTRIBUTION 


J.  C.  KEYTE,  M.  A. 


SOMETIME  DAVIS  CHINESE  SCHOLAR 
IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD 
AUTHOR  OF  “THE  PASSING  OF  THE  DRAGON” 


NEW  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 

1923 


First  Edition.  July  1923 
Second  Editio?i ,  December  1923 


Printed  in  Scotland 
by  Turnbull  Sjears,  Edinburgh 


FRANCES  E.  NORFOLK 


from  the  nephew  with  whom  she 
has  so  often  shared  "  the  broad  road 
that  stretches,  and  the  roadside  fire.” 


EDITORIAL  NOTE 


This  text-book  on  China  is  published  for  the  various 
Missionary  Societies  by  the  United  Council  for  Missionary 
Education,  who  desire  to  express  their  gratitude  to  the 
author,  the  Rev.  J.  C.  Keyte,  and  to  the  Peking  Union 
Church  for  allowing  him  some  measure  of  time  for  this 
work. 

Chapter  V — the  Work  of  the  Teacher — has  been 
modified  and  partially  re-written  in  this  country  by  the 
author’s  colleague,  the  Rev.  F.  S.  Drake.  The  Editorial 
Committee  asked  Mr  Drake  to  undertake  this  task  in 
order  to  bring  the  chapter  on  education  within  the  range 
of  a  larger  number  of  readers.  Time  did  not  permit  of 
consultation  with  Mr  Keyte,  nor  of  submitting  proofs  of 
the  book  to  him  for  revision  in  China.  The  Editorial 
Committee  must  therefore  accept  responsibility  for  any 
errors  that  may  have  crept  into  the  book  during  the 
final  process  of  revision  and  preparation  for  press. 

Three  photographs  used  for  the  illustrations  have  been 
supplied  by  the  author,  and  for  the  use  of  the  other  three 
the  Council  is  indebted  to  the  Church  Missionary  Society, 
the  China  Inland  Mission,  and  the  London  Missionary 
Society. 


AUTHOR’S  PREFACE 


To  give  any  adequate  account  of  present  developments 
in  China  and  of  the  Christian  contribution  to  the  new 
needs  thus  discovered  is  beyond  the  compass  of  a  book 
so  short  as  this  present  one. 

All  that  can  be  hoped  is  that  its  contents  may  be 
suggestive  in  helping  readers  strange  to  China  better 
to  appreciate  the  conditions  of  the  country,  and  the 
challenge  which  those  conditions  offer  to  Christian 
statesmanship. 

The  book,  as  originally  written,  was  somewhat  longer, 
but  had  to  be  cut  down  to  come  nearer  to  the  limits 
laid  down  by  the  United  Council  for  Missionary 
Education. 

The  author  is  indebted  for  information  to  too  many 
of  his  friends,  of  Chinese  and  other  nationalities,  to 
attempt  here  separate  acknowledgment  to  all,  but 
special  thanks  are  due  to  the  Rev.  J.  P.  Bruce,  M.A., 
D.Lit.,  for  revising  the  whole  manuscript  and  for 
his  valuable  criticism  and  corrections.  Dr  H.  Balme, 
F.R.C.S.,  D.P.H.,  who  also  read  through  the  whole  of 
the  manuscript,  has  given  invaluable  aid  in  pointing 
out  serious  omissions.  That  this  book  has  not  more  sins 
of  this  nature  is  largely  due  to  his  efforts.  In  this  con¬ 
nection  the  author  regrets  that  mention  of  many 
important  aspects  of  Christian  work  in  China  which 
he  has  learnt  to  admire,  either  from  personal  observation 


6 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


or  from  interviews  with  those  directly  responsible,  has 
had  to  be  omitted. 

The  Rev.  F.  S.  Drake,  B.A.,  B.D.,  whilst  home  for 
special  study  at  London  University,  has  made  time  to 
do  the  proof-reading.  To  him  a  further  and  a  great 
debt  is  due  for  help  given  in  obtaining  some  insight  into 
much  of  the  modern  development  of  China,  especially 
as  it  affects  the  Christian  Church. 

Lastly,  the  author’s  acknowledgment  is  gratefully 
made  to  Miss  Hope  Moore  of  Tsinan,  without  whose 
unstinted  help  the  manuscript  could  not  have  been 
prepared  for  the  Press.  J.  C.  K. 

Peking, 

February  1923 


CONTENTS 

Part  I— CHINA’S  NEED 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  The  Old-World  Outlook . 9 

II.  The  New  Framework  (PartI)  ....  24 

III.  The  New  Framework  (Part  II)  .  .  .  .41 

Part  II— THE  CHRISTIAN  CONTRIBUTION 

IV.  The  Work  of  the  Evangelist  ....  58 

V.  The  Work  of  the  Teacher.  ....  87 

VI.  The  Work  of  the  Healer  .  .  .  .  .114 

VII.  “  The  Home  of  all  Good  Men  ■’  ...  129 

Appendix  A  .......  151 

Appendix  B  .......  153 

Bibliography  .  .  .  .  .  .  .155 

Index . 158 

illustrations 

The  Altar  of  Heaven,  Peking  ....  Frontispiece 
A  Renaissance  Leader  .....  facing  p.  48 
A  Leader  in  the  Chinese  Church  „  48 

At  a  Chinese  Summer  School  „  81 

The  Work  of  the  Teacher  .  .  .  .  ,,112 

Chinese  Girls  at  School  .  .  .  .  .  ,,112 


7 


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j  KWEICHOW  \ 

A- _ 


MAP  OF  CHINA 

SHOWING  THE  EIGHTEEN  PROVINCES  AND  THE  PLACES 
MENTIONED  IN  THIS  BOOK 


1 


IN  CHINA  NOW 

PART  I 

CHINA'S  NEED 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 

In  order  to  gain  any  idea  of  the  task  which  confronts 
the  Church  of  Christ  in  China,  it  is  necessary  to  have 
some  conception  of  the  Chinese  world  in  which  that 
work  has  to  be  done,  and  of  the  outlook  to-day  of 
the  Chinese  themselves.  The  few  pictures  which  follow, 
unrelated  at  first  sight  though  they  may  be,  are  an 
attempt  to  indicate  this. 

One  bright  morning  in  August  1922  two  Englishmen, 
the  writer  and  an  old  friend,  were  travelling  down  the 
upper  reaches  of  the  great  Yangtze-kiang  in  a  small 
native  boat  used  for  carrying  postal  mails.  They  had 
been  fired  upon  early  that  morning  by  brigands  ;  but 
by  dint  of  keeping  the  boat  well  in  the  middle  of  the  broad 
stream  and  rowing  vigorously,  the  crew,  seven  men  in 
all,  had  got  past  the  danger.  At  eleven  o’clock  however 
another  shot  rang  out,  and  an  examination  of  the  river 
showed  that  they  were  in  a  narrow  stretch  easily  com¬ 
manded  from  the  banks.  The  crew  rowed  on  pluckily 
until  two  boats  carrying  armed  brigands  put  out  further 
down  the  river  in  order  to  cut  them  off.  It  was  evident 

9 


10 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


that  there  was  no  escape.  Reluctantly  their  boat  came 
ashore  to  a  small  cove  where  the  brigands  were  stationed. 
As  they  came  in,  one  of  the  Englishmen,  standing  up 
in  the  prow  of  the  boat,  confronted  a  group  of  brigand 
leaders  waiting  to  come  on  board.  In  a  tone  of  surprise 
and  quiet  indignation,  he  asked  the  meaning  of  this 
forced  interruption.  His  crew,  knowing  their  country¬ 
men  only  too  well,  were  profuse  with  polite  welcomes, 
pressing  upon  their  captors  pipes,  tea,  or  such  meagre 
attentions  as  a  small  saucepan  could  encompass.  A 
curious  lot  the  brigands  were.  Their  leader  apparently 
carried  no  arms,  being  simply  dressed  as  a  Chinese 
gentleman.  But  guarding  him  as  his  shadow  was  a 
personal  attendant  who  carried — not  in  his  belt,  but 
in  his  hand — a  wicked-looking  Mauser  pistol ;  while  a 
third  man,  the  regular  pirate  of  the  picture-books,  with 
a  rifle  still  warm  from  shooting  at  the  travellers, 
began  prowling  amongst  the  boat’s  cargo.  The  first 
demand  was  for  opium — the  presence  of  which  was 
denied  with  horror  by  the  captives  ;  the  second  for 
silver,  which  was  fortunately  lacking.  What  the  English¬ 
men  most  dreaded — being  carried  off  into  captivity  and 
held  up  to  ransom,  a  fate  which  had  a  short  time 
previously  befallen  a  well-known  missionary  in  West 
China — was  then  definitely  disclaimed  by  the  brigand 
chief.  After  further  perfunctory  glances  around,  and 
some  jerky  conversation  between  the  foreigners  and  the 
brigand  chief,  the  latter  retired  to  his  boat  and  the 
travellers  were  allowed  to  proceed.  To  this  day  it 
remains  a  mystery  that  they  escaped  so  lightly,  since 
they  were  entirely  in  the  power  of  these  outlaws. 

The  particular  point  to  be  noted  in  the  above  incident 
is  that  it  occurred  within  ten  English  miles  of  Chung- 


THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 


11 


king,  the  great  open  river  port  of  Szechwan  where  there 
are  British,  American,  French,  German,  and  Japanese 
Consuls  in  residence,  and  where  at  that  moment  there  were 
eighteen  thousand  Chinese  troops  stationed.  Burdened 
though  they  were  with  the  upkeep  of  enormous  armies, 
the  people  of  Szechwan  could  reckon  on  no  protection 
even  within  ten  miles  of  their  greatest  commercial 
centre  ! 

Fifteen  hundred  miles  away  from  Chung-king,  in  the 
famine-stricken  areas  of  Chihli  and  Shantung,  these 
same  two  Englishmen  eighteen  months  previously  had 
seen  something  of  famine  relief  work.  Amongst  their 
Christian  Chinese  co-workers  they  had  seen  real  evidences 
of  public  service,  and  here  and  there  some  short-lived 
efforts  by  Chinese  outside  the  Christian  circles  to  do 
something  to  ameliorate  the  general  suffering  ;  but  not 
one  in  a  thousand  of  the  general  Chinese  non-Christian 
public  did  anything  in  the  way  of  personal  service. 
For  the  monies  raised  by  “  drives,”  entertainments, 
and  so  on,  the  general  public  got  an  equivalent  in  the 
amusement  provided,  the  work  of  which  fell  upon  some 
Y.M.C.A.  group,  a  mission  college,  or  local  committee, 
in  which  the  driving  force  was  nearly  all  supplied  by 
the  foreign  or  the  Chinese  Christian  element.  When  it 
came  to  the  actual  distribution  of  relief  there  were 
endless  annoyances  from  carting  and  boat  contractors, 
railway  station-masters  and  others,  who  might  have 
been  expected  to  forward  efforts  to  relieve  their  suffering 
fellow-countrymen,  but  who,  on  the  contrary,  seemed 
to  see  in  the  famine  only  an  opportunity  of  lining  their 
own  pockets. 

One  notorious  case,  recorded  at  length  in  the  Peking 
and  Tientsin  Times ,  was  that  of  a  wealthy  general  who 


12 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


bought  cattle  in  the  stricken  area  at  low  figures,  and 
fed  them  with  grain  brought  from  Manchuria  by  the 
railway  which  should  have  been  sacred  to  famine 
relief  work.  He  re-sold  the  cattle  at  an  exorbitant 
figure  when  needed  the  following  year  for  ploughing 
purposes. 

In  June  1922  friends  of  China  were  hoping  for  a 
real  recovery  for  that  country.  General  Wu  Pei-fu 
had  beaten  the  ex-robber  chief,  Chang  Tso-lin,  in  the 
field,  and  had  called  for  the  re-assembling  of  the  old 
Parliament — the  nearest  approach  to  a  legally  constituted 
representative  assembly  that  China  has  known — and  the 
reinstating  of  Li  Yuan-hung,  the  unlawfully  deposed 
President  of  the  Republic,  preparatory  to  a  genuinely 
popular  election.  With  many  misgivings  President  Li 
Yuan-hung  left  the  safety  of  his  private  residence  in 
the  foreign  concession  of  Tientsin,  and  patriotically 
assumed  the  thankless  task  of  the  Republic’s  presidency. 
China  then  waited  hopefully  for  the  assembling  of  the 
old  Parliament.  In  July  she  was  still  waiting,  but  with 
little  hope.  For  daily  we  read  in  the  Press  that,  owing 
to  the  enormous  sums  spent  in  bribery  by  enemies 
of  the  Construction  Party,  many  members  of  the  old 
Parliament  remained  in  luxurious  safety  in  Shanghai, 
and  no  quorum  could  be  assembled  in  Peking  !  At  an 
hour  pregnant  with  immense  possibilities,  the  machinery 
of  Government  was  paralysed  because  with  the  country’s 
elected  representatives  personal  gain  counted  for  more 
than  public  welfare. 

The  one  body  which  does  evince  public  spirit  is  the 
student  body.  The  students  are  often  foolish,  conceited 
and  rash ;  they  take  themselves  with  a  seriousness 


THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 


13 


which  both  amuses  and  exasperates  the  beholder ;  they 
are  frequently  ill-informed  as  to  the  matter,  and  ill- 
advised  as  to  the  manner,  of  their  campaigns.  Yet  in 
spite  of  all  this  they  remain  the  one  organized  body  to 
show  some  unselfish  concern  for  their  country  as  such. 
This  exceptional  position  of  the  student  body  is  not  a 
mere  accident.  Recognizing  their  position  as  exceptional 
may  give  us  the  key  to  the  question  so  often  asked : 
“  What  is  wrong  with  China  ?  ”  For  the  students  are 
less  constrained  than  other  groups  by  China’s  old-world 
background ;  they  are  less  dominated  by  those  forces 
which  are  loosely  termed  “  heathen.”  Of  the  dangers — 
the  grave  dangers — resulting  from  this  cutting  away 
from  old  ties,  we  will  speak  later ;  for  the  moment 
it  must  suffice  to  point  out  that  it  is  the  group 
least  dominated  by  the  old  Chinese  mentality  which 
shows  the  most  disinterested  attitude  to  national 
affairs. 

Is  the  old  outlook  then  inimical  to  the  manifestation 
of  a  public  spirit  ?  In  spite  of  the  corruptions  which 
grew  with  the  centuries,  the  old  outlook  contained 
many  admirable  elements,  and  frequently  produced 
statesmen  and  governors  of  fine  character  and  un¬ 
flinching  patriotism.  But  the  theory  upon  which  it 
was  based  has  been  destroyed  by  the  new  conditions. 
The  moral  strength  that  permeated  it  has  vanished ; 
the  corruptions  that  sprang  from  it  have  alone  been 
retained. 

In  the  old  days  the  supposition  that  moral  force  was 
greater  than  physical  underlay  all  the  laws  and  public 
government.  A  very  small  army  sufficed  to  suppress 
disorder ;  the  village  elders  and  the  town  magistrates 
carried  out  their  decisions  because  they  were  repre- 


14 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


sentatives  of  a  system  which  was  never  challenged.  It 
was  right,  said  Chinese  public  opinion,  that  the  younger 
should  obey  the  elder ;  that  the  son  should  obey  the 
father ;  that  the  subject  should  obey  the  prince.  The 
sages  had  so  taught,  and  men’s  consciences  had  approved 
their  teaching  for  ages.  Departures  from  such  ruling 
were  wrong.  Such  departures  might  be  temporarily 
successful,  but  their  influence  quickly  ceased.  The 
momentary  ripple  which  they  made  upon  the  surface 
of  Chinese  life  died  away,  leaving  the  people  still  sure 
that  from  the  youngest,  humblest  subject  to  the  “  Son 
of  Heaven  ”  on  his  throne  there  was  a  regular  chain  of 
orderly  obedience  to  be  observed.  If  a  certain  line  of 
princes  had  "  exhausted  the  mandate  of  heaven,”  there 
was  a  temporary  convulsion  of  the  national  life  and 
another  line  of  princes  instituted.  But  the  throne  itself, 
that  autocratic  dispenser  of  fiats,  the  fount  of  authority, 
was  sacred. 

Imagine  all  this  changed  for  the  idea  that  there  was 
to  be  no  throne,  that  the  chief  magistracy  of  the  country 
might  be  grasped  by  those  who  had  most  money  to 
bribe,  or  most  power  to  bully.  The  idea  that  the  people 
had  either  the  right  or  the  capacity  to  choose  the  head 
of  the  state  was  foreign  to  all  Chinese  training  and 
thought  for  centuries.  It  was  an  idea  imported  from 
abroad  by  a  noisy  group,  itself  out  of  touch  with  the 
Chinese  habit  of  thought  and  with  the  conditions  pre¬ 
vailing  in  th  ^-interior  of  the  country.  To  the  peasant 
of  the  interioi{—and  China  has  an  overwhelmingly  peasant 
population — the  talk  about  “a  republic”  was  bewilder¬ 
ing.  All  he  knew  was  that  in  some  mysterious  way 
“  authority  ”  had  collapsed.  And  as  the  months  went 
on  there  s  \teijed  no  sign  of  its  return.  Previously, 


THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 


15 


whoever  might  topple  from  the  throne,  or  whoever 
climb  to  it,  the  power  of  the  throne  persisted. 
Now  there  was  no  power.  The  coolies  of  yesterday — 
the  brigands  of  the  day  before — appeared  in  military 
uniforms  armed  with  rifles.  Men  who  had  no  claims 
to  power  save  brazen  impudence,  in  spite  of  lack  of 
character,  of  education,  of  tradition  in  public  service, 
were  found  as  masters  in  the  old  yamens.1  Here  they 
issued  ill-considered  conflicting  orders  for  a  short  time, 
and  here  by  various  illegal  measures  they  gathered 
treasure.  From  the  yamens  they,  in  their  turn,  were 
ousted  by  other  bullies  and  slippery  scoundrels.  Mean¬ 
time  the  original  revolutionaries,  the  dreamers  of  fair 
dreams,  the  students  from  abroad  who  had  imagined  a 
smoothly  running  Western  republic,  had  disappeared  in 
the  rush  of  lawlessness  they  had  helped  to  let  loose  ; 
and  it  became  clear  that  unless  the  entire  outlook  of 
China  changed,  the  new  conditions  would  produce  far 
less  public  spirit  than  had  the  old.  For  granted  the 
venality,  the  corruption,  the  “  squeeze  ”  of  the  old  order 
of  magistracy,  the  magistrates  yet  did  attempt  to  preserve 
order  and  to  consolidate  the  state.  The  old  mandarin 
might  be  an  amazing  “  grafter,”  but  he  did  not  sell  his 
country  for  gain. 

As  one  travels  to-day  between  Ichang  and  Hankow 
on  the  Yangtze,  one  sees  miles  of  country  under  water, 
with  crops  gone,  house  roofs  showing  here  and  there, 
and  desolation  everywhere.  The  river  dykes  have  been 
left  without  repair,  and  ruin  is  the  result.  In  the 
old  days  the  magistrate  of  the  district  was  responsible 
for  the  dyke ;  he  could  insist  on  local  labour.  He 
probably  got  his  “  squeeze,”  but  his  first  care  had  to 
1  A  yamen  is  the  office  of  a  magistrate. 


16 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


be  the  dyke  itself,  otherwise  somebody  had  to  answer 
for  it.  To-day  the  dykes  get  broken  and  no  one  is 
punished.  British  river  captains  who  have  been  twenty 
years  on  the  river  state  emphatically  that  conditions 
have  never  been  so  bad  as  they  are  to-day. 

Main  Features  of  the  Old  Outlook 

The  main  features  of  the  old  outlook,  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  proved  insufficient  for  the  new  conditions, 
were  the  following  :  the  patriarchal  idea  of  government, 
combined  with  the  moral  and  religious  incentives  of 
Confucianism ;  the  mixture  of  muddled  superstition, 
geomancy,  fortune-telling,  magic,  “  luck,”  observances, 
local  deity  worship  and  demon  placation,  which  huddle 
together  under  the  shadow  of  the  name — stolen  from  an 
ancient  system  of  philosophy — of  Taoism ;  the  religious 
comfort  and  warnings  contained  in  the  Chinese  adapta¬ 
tions  of  Buddhism  ;  ancestor  worship ;  and  the  lack  of 
a  social  sense. 

Up  to  recent  years  Confucianism  has  been  the  system 
Civil  from  which  the  educated  classes  in  China 

G°HerhniMt  generally  drew  their  religious  comfort. 
Life-— 16  Moral  Emphasizing  as  it  does  the  practical 
Confucianism  aspects  of  the  religious  life — government  and 
conduct — Confucianism  is  often  referred  to  as  a  moral 
philosophy.  Indeed  the  statement  that  Confucianism 
is  an  ethical  system,  not  a  religion,  has  been  made  so 
frequently  that  it  passes  unquestioned  in  most  Western 
circles  to-day.  But  the  longer  one  lives  in  China  the 
more  one  questions  this.  There  are  passages  in  the 
Confucian  classics  where  the  character  for  “  T’ien  ”  is 
translated  “  Heaven  ”  with  results  that  are  almost 


THE  OLD  WORLD  OUTLOOK 


17 


meaningless.  By  boldly  translating  “  Tien  ”  as  "  God/’ 
these  passages  become  clear.1 

In  the  mind  of  the  present  writer,  Confucianism  is 
not  merely  an  ethical  system,  it  is  a  religion,  and 

T  ien  frequently,  though  by  no  means  always,  should 
be  translated  "God.”  The  patriarchal  system  which 
Confucianism  inculcates,  is  a  glorification  of  authority : 
the  younger  brother  obeying  the  elder ;  the  son  the 
father ;  the  younger  generation  the  older ;  the  subject 
the  prince.  Here  throughout  we  have  mind  obedient 
to  mind.  Why  then,  when  we  reach  the  mind  of  the 
prince,  should  we  think  of  him  as  obeying  not  some 
supreme  Mind,  the  will  of  a  personal  God,  but  merely 
the  blue  canopy  of  “  heaven  ”  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  political  teaching  of  Con¬ 
fucianism  is  clear,  and  met  with  wonderful  success  so 
long  as  China  was  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 
According  to  its  teaching  right  is  greater  than  might  ; 
moral  force  superior  to  physical;  the  civil  magistrate 
to  the  armed  soldier.  At  the  summit  was  the  emperor, 
occasionally  a  real  force,  generally  the  figure-head  behind 
which  the  real  directors  of  the  nation — a  small  circle 
of  bureaucrats— did  their  work.  But  with  the  mingling 
of  China’s  life  in  the  great  world  currents,  and  the  fall 
of  the  emperor — the  keystone  of  the  Confucian  arch — 
this  system  proves  itself  unequal  to  the  country’s  needs. 

Next  is  the  system  known  as  Taoism.  It  is  for  lack 
of  that  religious  element  which  lies  embedded  in  Con¬ 
fucianism  that  Taoism,  which  started  as  a  philosophy, 

<4  1  0n,®  .reason  wh7  Western  scholars  have  avoided  the  translation 
'  God  ”  is  that  the  title  of  the  Chinese  Emperor  “  1  ’ien  Tzu  ”  usually- 

translated  “Son  of  Heaven”  would  have  to  be  changed  to  “Son  of 

God.” 

B 


18 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


has  become  the  happy  hunting  ground  of  various  quacks 
The  and  impostors.  It  embraces  the  greater 

Perverted  part  0f  those  superstitious  practices  which 

instinct—  may  be  said  to  form  the  religion  of  the 

Taoism  mass  of  the  people.  Fortune-telling,  plan- 

chette  writing  and  spiritualistic  seances  are  activities 
of  the  Taoist  priests  to-day  just  as  the  cult  of  the  golden 
pill  of  immortality  was  in  a  former  generation. 

Buddhism  provides  the  most  spiritual  element  in  the 
The  lives  of  the  common  people  of  China. 

Spiritual  Amongst  the  mass  of  superstition  and 

Buddhism"  ceremonial,  such  religion  as  is  found  in 

China  is  more  due  to  Buddhism  than 
to  any  other  system.  It  is  perhaps  owing  to  their 
instinctive  recognition  of  Buddhism’s  vitality  that  the 
Confucianists  have  attacked  it  so  bitterly.  Its  original 
atheistic  teaching  does  not  trouble  the  Chinese  peasant  : 
“  to  lose  himself  in  the  All  ” — “  to  attain  Nirvana  ” — “  to 
be  as  the  dewdrop  that  has  at  last  found  its  home 
in  the  sea  ” — is  for  him  simply  summed  up  in  “  going 
to  Heaven,”  to  which  he  attaches  the  idea  of  positive 
happiness.  In  many  Buddhist  temples  there  are  to  be 
found,  worked  out  in  lath  and  plaster,  vivid  presenta¬ 
tions  of  hell  embodying  grotesque  ideas  of  people  being 
boiled  in  oil,  torn  by  demons,  impaled  on  pointed  stakes, 
and  so  on.  To  escape  such  material  horrors  is  another 
aim  of  the  Chinese  Buddhist.  The  unphilosophic  Chinese 
who  in  following  Buddhism  “  wants  to  be  good,” 
generally  starts  by  abstaining  from  meat,  wine,  opium, 
by  actively  taking  part  in  worship,  and  by  a  pilgrimage 
to  famous  shrines,  which  generally  entails  hard  mountain 
roads.  From  this  the  choicer  souls  go  on  to  positive 
good  works  for  the  community :  providing  tea  gratis  at 


THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 


19 


roadside  booths  for  thirsty  travellers,  mending  a  piece  of 
bad  road,  and  in  some  cases  travelling  about  “  exhorting 
to  virtue.”  From  the  ranks  of  such  devout  souls  come 
some  of  the  best  members  of  the  Christian  Church ; 
men  and  women  who  have  been  led  to  accept  with 
gladness  the  positive  idea  of  God  as  a  personal  Father, 
whose  love  may  be  known  and  rejoiced  in  by  His 
children.  It  is  from  such  Christians,  loving  their  own 
people,  grateful  for  what  Buddhism  gave  them  in  the 
past,  and  speaking  of  it  without  bitterness,  that  one  best 
realizes  how  great  are  the  gaps  in  Buddhism  as  a  religious 
system.  They  lead  one  to  realize  afresh  how  little 
positive  teaching  or  hope  it  has,  how  easily  it  may  be 
degraded  in  its  popular  presentations,  and  how  neces¬ 
sary  it  is  for  Christian  believers  to  bring  aid  to  the 
Chinese  that  they  may  have,  instead  of  a  faint  dawn, 
the  full  light  that  is  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. 

But  more  fundamental  than  the  detailed  teaching  of 
any  one  of  these  three  systems  is  ancestor  worship, 
which  is  really  an  undue  individualism. 

At  first  sight  this  statement  seems  paradoxical, 
A  Limited  since  ancestor  worship  necessitates  the 
Sense  of  subjugation  of  the  individual’s  needs  to  the 

*  supposed  needs  of  the  ancestors,  but  a 

closer  acquaintance  with  the  subject  reveals  the  fact 
that  ancestor  worship  really  means  individualism  writ 
large.  The  Mr  Wang  who  to-day  spends  money  in 
burning  paper  at  the  grave  of  his  ancestors  is  thereby 
insuring  the  perpetuity  not  only  of  their  identity  but 
of  his  own  also.  His  sons  and  grandsons  who  join  in 
the  worship  are  being  prepared  to  perform  the  ceremonies 
necessary  to  the  well-being  of  Mr  Wang’s  own  spirit 
after  his  death.  Moreover,  and  this  is  the  important 


20 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


fact,  Mr  Wang,  in  his  ancestors  and  his  descendants, 
is  really  himself  magnified,  stabilized,  made  more  endur- 
ingly  a  part  of  the  enduring  universe.  For  at  the 
back  of  ancestor  worship  lies  the  human  desire  which  is 
in  us  all :  the  desire  for  the  persistence  of  our  own 
personality.  Related  to  the  background  supplied  by  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  that  desire  in  its  manifestation 
becomes  a  social  blessing ;  related  to  the  background 
supplied  by  old  China  it  became  a  selfish  curse,  and 
the  proof  of  this  is  found  in  the  fact  that,  though  the  unit 
in  China  is  not  the  individual  but  the  family,  it  has  not 
widened  beyond  the  family.  Within  the  circle  of  the 
family  the  communistic  spirit  is  fostered ;  for  it  heroic 
sacrifices  are  made,  and  its  manifestations  are  frequently 
admirable.  It  is  all  the  more  remarkable  therefore  that, 
after  centuries  of  such  a  system,  the  unit  has  in  so 
few  cases  widened  to  that  of  the  nation.  The  call  of 
"  country,”  which  finds  so  warm  a  response  in  Britain 
and  America  amongst  the  humblest  member  of  the 
populace,  is  hardly  responded  to  in  China  except  by 
members  of  the  mandarin  class  (and  by  no  means  always 
by  them)  with  their  intensive  training  in  the  Confucian 
classics.  The  further  idea  of  a  whole  world  of  mankind 
to  be  served  is  practically  alien  to  Chinese  popular 
thought. 

How  does  this  general  outlook  affect  the  daily  life 
of  an  average  Chinese  ? 

Character ed  It  means  first  °t  all  that  from  his 
childhood  he  is  supposed  to  have  no  will 
of  his  own  ;  he  has  to  accept  unquestioned  the  decisions 
of  his  elders.  In  actual  practice  he  is  criminally  spoilt 
in  the  days  of  his  childhood.  He  has  only  to  scream 
for  what  he  sees  and  if  his  parents  can  give  it  to  him 


THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 


21 


he  gets  it.  “  T’a  yao  ” — he  wants  it — is  quite  enough. 
It  is  doubly  hard  to  come  with  a  jerk  from  such  training, 
or  lack  of  training,  to  the  complete  subjugation  of  his 
will  to  that  of  his  elders,  which  is  forced  upon  him 
directly  he  reaches  an  age  where  the  charm  of  child¬ 
hood  is  exchanged  for  the  prosaic  power  to  toil.  (With 
children  of  rich  parents,  owing  to  continued  opportunities 
of  commanding  the  services  of  attendants,  the  spoiling 
continues  for  many  years.)  The  development  of  moral 
character  which  the  exercise  of  responsibility  brings, 
is  denied  the  Chinese  youth.  In  the  question  of  his 
marriage  he  has  no  voice.  After  marriage  his  wife  is 
considered  the  servant  of  his  mother ;  he  has  no  re¬ 
sponsibility  for  providing  a  house  for  her.  The  training 
of  his  children  is  largely  taken  out  of  his  hands  by  his 
parents,  in  whose  house  he  lives. 

Meanwhile  he  is  swept  into  the  remorseless  grind  of 
economic  pressure  ;  he  becomes  a  cog  in  the  machine  for 
finding  food  for  a  family  far  too  large  for  the  patrimony 
to  support  in  comfort.  If  a  younger  son,  he  will  be 
thrust  out  into  the  dangerous,  vicious  companionship  of 
chair-bearers,  rickshaw-men,  boat  bargees,  load-carriers — 
the  unskilled  men  who  wander  from  district  to  district 
without  moral  oversight,  without  the  decent  observances 
and  constraints  of  home,  picking  up  only  too  much  evil 
knowledge  in  their  journeys,  and  returning  periodically 
to  their  home  for  festivals,  and  to  see  their  friends. 

For  this  lack  of  expansion  in  a  social  direction  and 
of  character  development,  the  religious  systems  prevalent 
in  China  for  centuries  have  their  share  of  responsibility, 
since  although  the  background  of  the  average  Chinese  is 
woven  of  many  threads  besides  the  distinctively  religious 
ones,  it  is  the  religious  form  and  colouring  which  have 


22 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


been  most  determinative  in  the  formation  of  the  entire 
fabric.  Somewhere  at  the  back  of  his  mind  the  most 
prosaic  man  has  a  vague  idea  as  to  the  cause  and  the 
governing  forces  of  his  universe.  He  may  not  use 
religious  phraseology — though  in  China  he  has  little  of 
our  Western  shyness  on  this  subject — he  may  refer  to 
“  luck  ”  or  “  fate,”  but  his  reading  of  these  will  be 
largely  determined  by  the  teaching  and  practice  of  the 
religions  prevalent  in  his  locality. 

There  is  considerable  objection  to-day  to  the  use  of 
the  term  “  heathen  ”  as  applied  to  religious  systems, 
and  the  present  writer  has  no  desire  to  appear  offensive 
in  referring  to  the  religions  of  China  when  distinguishing 
them  from  Christianity.  Yet  distinguished  they  must 
be.  For  such  contentions  as  those  often  put  forward — 
that  “  the  Chinese  should  be  left  alone  religiously  since 
their  own  systems  suit  them  ”  ;  and  that  “  one  religion 
is  as  good  as  another  so  long  as  it  helps  a  man  to  be 
honest  ” — are  essentially  shallow.  The  distinction  made 
here  is  that  the  conception  of  God  the  Father  as  given 
us  in  Jesus  Christ  is  more  than  merely  individualistic ; 
it  is  a  social  one ;  whilst  that  given  in  other  systems 
is  individualistic  alone,  or  at  best  nationalistic.  The 
desire  for  salvation  of  the  individual  soul  apart  from 
a  redeeming  of  the  race  marks  the  non-Christian 
religions,  whilst  to  the  extent  to  which  some  narrow  ex¬ 
positions  of  Christianity  have  failed  to  rise  beyond  this, 
they  have  failed  to  apprehend  the  purpose  of  Him  who 
came  that  we  might  have  Life  and  that  the  world  might 
be  saved  through  Him. 

The  reckless  procreation  which  ancestor  worship  en¬ 
courages  in  China  means  that  for  the  vast  majority  the 
great  obsessions  are  sex  and  stomach  :  to  leave  male 


THE  OLD-WORLD  OUTLOOK 


23 


descendants  who  shall  carry  on  the  ancestor  worship ; 
to  provide  food  for  the  many  mouths  in  the  family. 
This  is  the  foreground  of  most  Chinese  thoughts.  In 
the  background  lies  the  idea  of  authority — obedience 
to  elders,  to  the  magistrate,  to  the  government  chiefs  ; 
the  idea  of  “  luck  ”  largely  as  taught  by  Taoism — the 
lucky  days  (popular  Buddhism  takes  its  share  here), 
“fengshui,”  good  or  evil  superstition;  and  the  idea  of 
religion  as  provided  partly  by  Confucianism  and  much 
more  by  Buddhism. 

How  far  does  this  old  background  prove  responsive 
to  the  increasing  pressure  of  the  new  conditions  forced 
upon  China  by  contact  with  the  world  outside  ?  For 
the  modern  factory  worker  in  Chinese  cities,  has  it 
guidance  or  control  ?  If  not,  whence  are  these  latter 
to  come,  and  if  there  be  not  sufficient  recovery  in  the 
old  forces,  to  what  other  forces  can  we  look  ? 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK:  PART  I 

The  Old  Order  Replaced 

The  old  framework  of  Chinese  society  was  compara- 
„  .  . tively  simple.  A  patriarchal  government, 

which  was  easily  understood  and  at  the 
same  time  remarkably  efficient,  administered  the  affairs 
of  an  agricultural  people.  It  is  significant  that,  in 
the  order  of  social  distinctions  to  which  the  Chinese 
were  accustomed,  the  scholar-administrator  ranked  first, 
and  the  peasant-farmer  came  second — the  artisan  and 
the  trader  being  third  and  fourth  respectively.  Until 
recent  years  the  mass  of  Chinese  people  have  been 
peasant  proprietors,  living  on  their  self-sufficing  farms  ; 
the  wheat,  millet,  rice,  maize,  vegetables  and  fruit  which 
formed  their  staple  food  they  grew  for  themselves.  A 
piece  of  ground  bearing  cotton  provided  the  raw  material 
which  the  women  wove  into  strong  cloth,  and  for  cold 
weather  the  warm  cotton  wool  quilted  between  this 
fabric  sufficed.  Such  indigo  as  they  needed  for  dyeing 
was  grown  in  some  odd  patch,  while  the  dyeing  vat 
took  up  but  a  small  corner  and  might  be  shared  by 
several  families.  Tobacco  took  up  another  small  patch. 
Similarly  with  the  plant  for  oil,  the  reeds  for  lamp  wicks, 
the  tree  for  soap.  Local  carpenters  provided  agricultural 
implements.  Salt,  tea,  leather,  and  pottery  were  the 
main  articles  obtained  from  outside.  Of  these,  salt  was 


24 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


25 


a  Government  monopoly,  whilst  tea  in  North  China  had 
to  be  bought  from  the  trader. 

Under  these  conditions  there  was  comparatively  little 
scope  for  the  merchant,  and  such  merchants  as  were 
found  in  the  country  towns  and  villages  were  of  small 
social  importance.  Up  to  the  end  of  last  century  the 
great  streets  of  Shanghai  and  the  provincial  capitals  gave 
an  erroneous  impression  of  the  relative  importance  of 
this  class  of  Chinese  society.  Banking  has  been  largely 
a  close  preserve  kept  within  a  few  families  for  centuries. 
At  the  back  of  the  great  banks  and  pawnshops  there 
were  generally  to  be  found  the  magistrates,  or  members 
of  a  family  whose  fortunes  were  founded  by  some 
magistrate  member. 

The  Chinese  Civil  Service  was  nominally  open  to  any 
„  .  successful  candidate,  and  it  was  often  said 

that  a  poor  peasant  boy  might  rise  to  be 
a  viceroy.  Yet  inevitably  the  system  tended  to  become 
increasingly  confined  to  the  magistrate  class.  The  family 
of  a  great  official  had  funded  wealth  and  a  tradition  of 
public  service ;  they  commanded  the  aid  of  private 
tutors ;  they  met  the  officials  of  their  day  on  even 
terms.  The  Civil  Service  was  the  natural  opening  for 
their  sons  ;  it  was  inevitable  that  for  them  the  gateway 
to  place  and  power  should  swing  open  with  comparative 
ease.  As  against  this  we  have  to  remember  that  in 
some  cases  the  sons  of  such  families  dissipated  their 
patrimony  in  profligate  living.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  each  generation  a  small  percentage  of  the 
highest  posts  were  filled  by  men  who  had  risen  from 
humble  circumstances.  It  was  through  this  double 
process  of  shedding  its  degenerate  members  and  re¬ 
ceiving  a  continuous  infusion  of  new  blood  that  the 


26 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Local  Self- 
Government 


mandarinate  of  China  escaped  the  fate  of  so  many 
aristocracies. 

It  was  by  its  simple  yet  efficient  system  of  popular 
representation  and  popular  responsibility 
that  old  China  was  kept  together  so  well. 
The  nominee  of  the  central  Government, 
who  acted  as  County  Magistrate,  was  able  to  call  upon 
the  popularly-elected  elder  for  a  city  street  or  village 
and  demand  the  reason  why  any  misdemeanour  had 
been  allowed  in  that  elder’s  jurisdiction.  Failing  a 
satisfactory  answer  the  whole  district  was  in  disgrace, 
and  the  people  of  the  district  would  vent  their  dis¬ 
pleasure  upon  their  representative.  To  minimize  the 
danger  of  crime  in  their  midst,  a  man’s  neighbour  on 
either  side  of  him  was  responsible  for  his  good  conduct. 
If  he  harboured  strangers  and  did  not  report  them  to 
the  authorities,  his  neighbours  would  be  quick  to  do  so. 
Under  such  a  system  the  policing  was  done  by  the 
people  themselves. 


The  New  Political  Structure 

During  the  last  twelve  years  or  so  the  old  order  has 
fallen  to  pieces.  A  Manchu  dynasty  has  gone,  and  to 
the  people’s  surprise  the  steadying  power  of  the  throne 
has  gone  with  it.  In  its  stead  they  have  a  Republic 
with  an  abortive  "  constitution  ”  discarded  before  it  was 
completed ;  a  Parliament  that  cannot  get  a  quorum  ; 
and  a  bewildering  series  of  political  experiments  and 
financial  expedients  of  which  they  no  sooner  master  the 
names  than  the  things  which  the  names  indicate  have 
passed  away.  It  is  true  that  mandarins  are  still  with 
us.  But  new  mandarins  are  not  as  the  old ;  they  lack 
the  maturity,  the  traditions  of  responsibility,  the  suavity 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


27 


and  finesse.  They  retain  of  the  old  system  only  its 
corruptions — corruptions  moreover  lacking  the  accom¬ 
panying  veils  of  decency.  In  place  of  a  trained  Civil 
Service,  China  to-day  groans  under  an  illiterate  horde 
of  militarists,  the  edicts  of  the  gentleman  scholar  being 
replaced  by  the  machine-gun  of  the  uniformed  coolie. 

For  the  simple,  easily-understood  machinery  of  the 
old  Empire,  there  was  suddenly  substituted  the  com¬ 
plicated  methods  of  a  Western  Republic  by  men  whose 
residence  in  the  United  States  had  given  them  a 
grateful  appreciation  of  American  government,  but 
who  themselves  had  had  no  administrative  experience. 
Two  things  they  overlooked.  The  American  Republic 
as  they  knew  it  was  the  result  of  long  growth 
and  experiment  in  the  United  States,  and  it  was  in 
line  with  the  American  temperament.  On  the  other 
hand  the  Chinese  nation  was  unprepared  for  such  an 
experiment,  and  the  Chinese  temperament,  with  its 
fatalistic  acceptance  of  authority,  was  unfitted  for  such 
innovations. 

The  system  of  election  of  representatives  by  universal 
franchise  is  difficult  enough  to  work  out  in  our  own 
country.  The  party  machine  which  seems  to  be  its 
inevitable  accompaniment  is  apt  to  become  dominant. 
To  pass  the  law  of  adult  suffrage  is  by  no  means  the 
same  thing  as  to  secure  the  expression  of  the  popular 
will  in  the  elected  assembly ;  still  less  does  it  mean 
that  such  an  assembly  will  proceed  to  do  what  the  people 
wish.  If  after  generations  of  popular  government  the 
Anglo-American  world  has  not  even  yet  succeeded  in 
achieving  true  democratic  control,  how  wild  a  dream 
it  is  to  expect  the  Chinese,  with  their  worship  of 
“  authority,”  to  achieve  it  at  a  bound  ! 


28 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


The  New 
Government 


Perhaps  a  brief  outline  of  the  actual  changes  that 
have  taken  place  in  the  Government  of 
China  may  be  helpful  here. 

In  the  new  Republican  government  the 
Emperor  is  replaced  by  a  President  who  is  elected  for 
five  years 1  by  a  National  Convention  composed  of 
members  from  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament.  The 
President  is  assisted  by  a  responsible  Cabinet,  composed 
of  the  Ministers  of  the  different  Boards  of  the  Govern¬ 
ment,  and  led  by  a  Prime  Minister,  much  after  the 
manner  of  the  British  Cabinet. 

Parliament  is  divided  into  an  Upper  House  (the 
Senate)  which  corresponds  to  the  British  House  of 
Lords  ;  and  a  Lower  House  (the  House  of  Representa¬ 
tives)  which  corresponds  to  the  British  House  of  Commons. 
The  Senate  has  about  one  hundred  and  seventy  members, 
who  are  elected  by  a  comparatively  small  portion  of 
the  population — men  whose  scholarship,  or  wealth,  or 
position  in  the  Government,  has  given  them  a  position 
decidedly  above  the  average  in  Chinese  society.  The 
House  of  Representatives  has  one  member  for  each 
million  of  the  population.  The  electors — who  are  all 
men — must  either  possess  a  certain  amount  of  wealth, 
or  must  have  had  a  certain  amount  of  elementary  educa¬ 
tion.  Though  the  standard  required  is  not  high,  it 
disqualifies  over  ninety  per  cent  of  the  population  from 
voting. 

In  addition  to  this  national  or  Central  Government, 
each  of  the  eighteen  provinces  of  China  and  the  three 
provinces  of  Manchuria  has  a  Provincial  Government  of 


1  No  President  has  as  yet  succeeded  in  remaining  in  power  for  the 
full  five  years.  Yuan  Shih-kai  (1912-1916)  has  had  the  longest  term  of 
office. 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


29 


its  own.  It  must  be  remembered  that  each  of  these 
provinces  can  be  compared  with  European  countries  in 
size.  The  chief  troubles  in  China  to-day  spring  from 
the  relationship  between  the  Central  Government  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  Provincial  Governments  on  the  other. 
In  theory,  at  the  head  of  each  Provincial  Government 
are  a  Civil  Governor  and  a  Military  Governor,  each 
appointed  by  the  President.  In  practice,  the  Military 
Governor  either  completely  overshadows  the  Civil 
Governor,  or  else  does  without  him  altogether,  he  him¬ 
self  filling  the  two  positions  at  the  same  time.  Such 
are  the  Tu-chuns,  referred  to  frequently  in  this  book. 
The  taxes  throughout  the  province  are  collected  by  the 
Governor,  and  should  be  transmitted  by  him  to  the 
Central  Government.  This  he  does  so  long  as  he  is 
on  good  terms  with  that  Government.  But  if  he  is 
restricted  in  his  desires  by  the  Central  Government  he  is 
well  able  to  divert  the  taxes  of  his  province  to  his  own 
use,  and  to  support  therewith  his  army,  which,  being 
recruited  from  that  province,  places  loyalty  to  its  com¬ 
mander  before  loyalty  to  the  President. 

Each  province  has  its  own  parliament,  known  as  the 
Provincial  Assembly.  It  consists  of  one  hundred  to 
two  hundred  men,  according  to  the  size  of  the  province, 
who  are  elected  in  the  same  way  as  the  members  for 
the  Lower  House  of  the  national  Parliament.  The 
Provincial  Assembly  has  power  to  make  laws  for  the 
province  ;  and  power — theoretically — to  impeach  the 
Governor.  But  in  practice  the  man  with  the  army 
behind  him  wields  the  power. 

The  last  step  in  the  Government  system  is  the 
administration  of  the  counties  into  which  each  province 
is  divided.  Over  each  county  is  a  Magistrate,  who 


30 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


carries  upon  his  shoulders  the  weight  of  all  the  affairs 
of  the  county — judicial,  educational  and  military — just 
as  the  Governor  does  for  the  province.  But  the 
Magistrate  has  not  yet  a  popularly-elected  Assembly  to 
assist  him.  He  relies,  however,  upon  the  co-operation  of 
the  local  gentry  in  many  things,  and  there  are  com¬ 
mittees  elected  by  the  leaders  of  the  people  that  manage 
some  of  the  county  concerns.  This  is  the  beginning  of 
a  County  Council,  which  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  great 
needs  of  the  people. 

In  the  above  outline,  the  President,  Governor  and 
Magistrate  of  the  Republic,  correspond  to  the  Emperor, 
Viceroy  and  Magistrate  of  the  old  Empire.  The  changes 
introduced  by  the  Republic  consist  mainly  in  the  addition 
to  the  old  system  of  the  more  or  less  shadowy  elected 
Assemblies. 

One  obvious  result  of  these  changes  is  an  immense 
increase  in  the  area  of  bribery.  Under  the 

Corruption*  system  the  man  aspiring  to  an  office  in 

the  Government  had  to  pay  the  man  above 
him  for  his  post — certain  decencies  of  camouflage  being 
of  course  observed.  From  the  county  magistrate  to  the 
Empress  Dowager  in  her  palace  seclusion,  the  system 
held.  Such  a  custom  had  the  sanction  of  a  hoary  an¬ 
tiquity  ;  it  was  the  only  system  understood ;  it  came 
under  the  head  of  “  legitimate  squeeze/’  and  though  the 
channel  was  long,  it  was  narrow.  But  imagine  the 
situation  when  thousands  of  people  had  the  opportunity 
of  being  elected  to  Provincial  Assemblies,  when  hundreds 
had  to  be  elected  for  the  Parliament  in  Peking  !  There 
was  only  one  known  way  of  persuading  people  with  power 
to  put  a  would-be  member  into  the  coveted  place,  and 
the  candidate  took  that  way.  What  had  been  a  long 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


31 


narrow  channel  of  bribery,  reaching  from  a  country 
yamen  to  the  Peking  Palace,  became  a  widespread 
flood. 

And  having  spent  money  to  get  into  the  Assembly, 
the  new  representative  naturally  wants  to  get  his  money 
back  with  interest.  His  vote  becomes  both  his  working 
capital  and  his  working  machinery.  In  some  cases  a 
man  who  does  not  wish  to  enter  the  Assembly  is  forced 
into  it  by  his  neighbours  ;  since  these  know  him  to 
have  money,  they  insist  that  he  stand  as  candidate,  thus 
ensuring  a  lively  circulation  of  coin  in  the  district.  When 
a  man  refuses,  it  is  pointed  out  to  him  that  his  would-be 
constituents  can  make  things  very  awkward  for  him  in 
his  business,  and  that  the  best  means  of  smoothing  away 
such  awkwardness  is  to  obtain  the  councillor’s  position 
and  influence. 

One  manufacturer,  a  man  much  above  the  average 
in  his  commercial  morality,  well-educated  and  highly 
esteemed  in  his  city,  was  in  this  way  jockeyed  into  the 
Assembly,  and  two  years  ago  spent  the  equivalent  of 
£25,000  in  an  attempt  to  bribe  his  way  to  the  presidency 
of  his  province. 

Such  evils  shrink  to  small  proportions,  however,  when 
compared  with  the  curse  of  militarism 
of1  tiie^S word  which  is  fast  ruining  the  country. 

The  Republicans  of  1911  and  the 
Imperialists  were  equally  reckless  in  their  recruiting ; 
whilst  Yuan  Shih-kai,  in  order  to  realize  his  monarchical 
dreams,  spent  the  foreign  loans  which  incorrigible  foreign 
faith  in  his  prestige  enabled  him  to  secure,  in  raising 
division  after  division.  Each  new  aspirant  to  supreme 
power  has  followed  the  same  course  :  Tuan  Chi-jui, 
“  Little  ”  Hsu,  Chang  Tso-lin,  Sun  Yat-sen  and  Chen 


82 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Chung-min.1  In  Szechwan,  for  example,  secured  by 
its  mountain  frontiers  from  any  remote  chance  of 
foreign  invasion,  where  a  moderate-sized,  well-disciplined 
gendarmerie  could  protect  the  province,  army  after 
army  has  been  recklessly  raised.  These  armies  do 
nothing  but  batten  on  the  people  and  quarrel  amongst 
themselves.  Brigandage,  meanwhile,  grows  by  leaps  and 
bounds  and  is  constantly  recruiting  its  ranks  from 
deserting  soldiery,  whilst  an  unblushing  traffic  in  arms 
and  ammunition  goes  on  between  the  “  army  ”  and  the 
outlaws. 

Amongst  possible  methods  of  disbandment,  the  one 
with  the  best  chance  of  success  is  that  promised  by 
a  foreign  loan  raised  specifically  for  the  purpose,  and 
administered  by  a  foreign  service  of  the  same  order 
as  that  of  the  Salt  Gabelle,  the  Postal  Service  or  the 
Customs,  which  have  served  China  so  well  in  the  past. 
Yet  at  a  hint  of  such  a  course  many  western-trained 
“  republicans,”  secure  in  their  residences  in  Shanghai, 


1  The  author  in  previous  publications  has  met  with  complaints 
made  both  in  published  reviews  and  in  private  correspondence  about 
the  difficulty  experienced  by  readers  owing  to  the  strangeness  of  the 
Chinese  names  of  the  characters  mentioned.  Correspondents  declare 
that  they  are  bewildered  with  the  many  “  Changs  ”  and  “  Wangs”  and 
so  on  ;  also  that  the  three  names  which  they  generally  find  attached  to 
one  person  baffle  them.  Part  of  the  difficulty  arises  from  the  very 
few  surnames  in  China.  The  Pai  Chia  Hsing  ( The  Booh  of  the  Hundred 
Family  Names),  which  represents  the  recognized  list  of  Chinese  sur¬ 
names,  has  less  than  four  hundred  names,  which  inevitably  provokes 
confusion  when  they  have  to  be  spread  over  four  hundred  million 
people.  The  present  recognized  method  in  books  written  in  English 
is  to  put  the  surname  first,  with  the  two  “  given  ”  names  following,  the 
first  with  a  capital,  the  second  with  a  small  letter  after  a  hyphen. 
Thus,  in  the  case  of  Mr  C.  T.  Wang  (as  he  is  known  to  the  foreign  world), 
whose  surname  is  “  Wang,”  and  whose  two  given  names  are  “  Cheng  ” 
and  “  Ting,”  we  have  the  official  writing,  “  Wang  Cheng-ting.” 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


33 


Tientsin  or  some  safely  controlled  foreign  area,  clamour 
with  indignation  against  the  “  insult  to  China’s  sovereign 
rights.” 1  b 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising  that 
China  is  rapidly  being  disintegrated.  The  mandate  of 
the  Peking  Government  is  powerless  outside  Peking 
unless  acceptable  to  the  military  head  of  the  province 
concerned.  Yen,  the  “  Model  Governor  ”  of  Shansi 
province  in  the  North  has  done  fine  work  and  maintains 
good  order,  but  he  does  so  by  guarding  his  barriers 
rigidly,  allowing  no  “  Government  ”  troops  to  enter 
Shansi.  Chang  Tso-lin  is  still  “  the  uncrowned  King 
of  Manchuria.” 


The  Economic  Revolution 

So  much  for  the  new  political  structure.  But  almost 
as  startling  are  the  changed  economic  conditions  into 
which  China  is  being  thrust,  due  chiefly  to  the  in¬ 
dustrializing  of  the  country. 

A  traveller  on  the  upper  reaches  of  the  Yangtze  river 
can  frequently  see  a  band  of  forty  to  sixty  men,  many 

1  Since  the  above  was  written  a  suggestion  has  been  put  forth  by 
a  Chinese  (who  uses  the  pseudonym  “  Shen  Chang”)  in  the  South  China 
Morning  Post  advocating  the  formation  by  the  Central  Government 
of  a  Chinese  army  under  foreign  leadership,  “  which  will  destroy  the 
power  of  the  Tu-chuns  (provincial  military  governors),  exterminate  the 
lawless  hordes  preying  on  the  country,  and  evolve  something  like  order 
out  of  chaos.”  An  editorial  upon  this  in  the  South  China  Morning 
Post  brought  an  able  letter  from  another  Chinese  citizen  to  the  Weekly 
Review  of  the  Far  East,  supporting  the  idea  of  foreign  assistance  and 
suggesting  it  be  also  adopted  in  a  scheme  for  reforming  the  national 
finance.  ”...  We  must  frankly  admit  that  we  have  not  much 
knowledge  of  high  finance  ;  it  is  very  meagre  if  there  is  any. 

It  is  a  fallacious  idea  of  pride  to  have  no  foreigners  in  work  which  we 
alone  cannot  manage.”  This  willingness  on  the  part  of  modern  Chinese 
to  be  thus  helped  is  all  to  the  good. 

C 


34 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


of  them  stark  naked,  struggling  painfully  at  a  rope, 
which  in  some  instances  will  be  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in 
length,  attached  to  a  great  junk  which  is  in  this  way 
being  towed  up  against  the  current.  In  pulling  against 
the  rapids  the  trackers  have  to  put  out  all  their  strength, 
each  man  being  attached  to  the  main  rope  by  a  broad 
band  of  strong  cloth  round  his  shoulders.  He  goes  down 
on  his  hands  and  knees  crawling  like  an  animal  in 
his  endeavour  to  get  more  purchase.  When  a  failure 
to  get  the  boat  over  some  obstacle  would  mean  loss  of 
life  and  property,  the  lao-da  (captain)  if  he  happens  to 
be  on  the  shore,  or  his  lieutenant,  who  is  head  ganger 
of  the  trackers,  will  bring  a  heavy  knotted  rope  down 
upon  their  bare  backs  in  order  to  get  from  them  their 
last  ounce  of  strength,  cursing  vilely  and  shrilly  the 
while,  until  the  boat  once  more  moves  forward.  For 
the  trip  from  Ichang  to  Chung-king,  which  takes 
weeks  to  accomplish,  a  tracker  gets  little  more  than  his 
daily  food — a  plentiful  supply  of  well-cooked  rice  with 
some  few  vegetables  and  hot  peppers  ;  for  drink  he  goes 
to  a  bucket  which,  after  being  let  down  into  the  brown 
muddy  river,  has  its  contents  stirred  by  a  bamboo  tube 
containing  alum  which  helps  the  sediment  to  settle. 
In  addition  to  his  food  he  gets  the  total  sum  of 
tenpence  for  the  whole  trip.  Coming  down  with  the 
current  where  no  tracking  is  necessary,  occasional  spells 
at  the  oar  being  sufficient,  the  tracker  gets  his  food 
without  the  tenpence.  On  small  boats  further  inland, 
where  easier  means  of  livelihood  are  open  to  the  people, 
the  boatman  can  command  his  food  and  twopence  half¬ 
penny  per  day.  These  trackers  are  doing  to-day  what 
their  forbears  have  done  for  centuries  and  at  the  same 
rate  ;  they  represent  old  China. 


35 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 

But  in  June  1922  a  strike  of  the  Seamen’s  Union  at 
Hong-Kong  held  up  the  whole  traffic  of  the  port,  and 
m  spite  of  the  united  power  of  the  great  foreign  shipping 
firms,  and  the  government  of  the  colony,  the  men  gained 
their  objective— a  rise  of  twenty  per  cent  all  round.  In 
this  increase  all  the  coast  and  river  steam  services  soon 
participated  ;  so  that  on  the  foreign  steamer  penetrating 
remote  Szechwan  itself,  as  well  as  at  Hong-Kong,  the 
following  rates  apply — ordinary  seamen  £2  per  month  * 
higher  grade  £3 ;  quartermasters  £4.1  In  addition  to 
this  they  get  part  of  their  food ;  they  are  well  housed 
m  clean,  well-lit,  airy  quarters— such  as  British  and 
American  sailors  a  few  years  ago  would  have  envied  * 
they  have  Saturday  afternoon  and  Sundays  free  from  any 
but  the  strictly  necessary  work.  Yet  the  steamer  hand, 
whether  on  the  Yangtze  or  at  Hong-Kong,  is  no  better  a 
sailor  than  the  Szechwan  tracker,  and  he  encounters  less 
danger.  Simply  the  economic  conditions  have  changed. 
Wherever  the  steamer  or  railway  services  penetrate 
the  same  thing  occurs. 

Even  in  remote  Szechwan  the  junks  are  doomed.  On 
the  eve  of  his  departure  from  that  province  in  1922, 
the  writer  had  the  choice  of  two  steamers,  the  Fu  Yun 
and  the  Fu  Wo.  But  as  a  freight  war  was  then  being 
waged  between  the  rival  steamer  companies,  the  cargo 
rates  sank  so  low  that  it  was  found  possible  to  load 
the  Fu  Yun  with  salt,  a  commodity  which  from  time 
immemorial  has  been  carried  by  the  junks ;  whereupon 
the  junk  masters  banded  themselves  together  in  an 
attack  on  the  Fu  Yun ,  rushed  her  decks  and  did 
three  thousand  pounds’  worth  of  damage  in  her  engine- 

1  Exchange  rate  used  being  eight  Mexican  dollars  to  the  pound 


36 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


room.  It  was  the  old,  old  cry  of  hand-labour  against 
machinery,  the  instinctive  struggle  of  a  class  which 
knows  its  cause  is  doomed  even  while  it  struggles.  At  a 
conservative  estimate  five  years  will  see  all  the  junks 
which  now  do  the  long  Ichang  to  Chung-king  trip  cleared 
off  the  river.  And  the  Szechwan  trackers  ?  They  will 
be  struggling  to  oust  the  women  and  children  who  at 
present  serve  in  the  new  industries  which  have  been 
started  by  large  foreign  firms  (firms  which  will  soon 
be  followed  by  Chinese  concerns)  developing  enterprises 
based  on  goat  skins,  duck  feathers,  pig  bristles,  tobacco 
leaf,  and  the  enormous  mineral  wealth  of  the  province, 
which  only  requires  good  transport  and  a  settled  govern¬ 
ment  to  come  to  its  own  in  the  economic  realm. 

In  Yunnan,  which  borders  on  French  Indo-China  to 
the  south,  and  Burma  to  the  west,  the  same  applies— 
though  in  a  smaller  measure.  Unfortunately— for  the 
Yunnanese— the  French,  though  they  have  supplied  a 
railway  from  the  coast  to  the  capital,  Yunnanfu,  have 
imposed  such  a  high  tariff  that  export  trade  develops 

very  slowly. 

In  Tsinan,  the  capital  of  Shantung,  there  is  to  be 
seen  a  flour  mill  comparable  in  its  general  good  manage¬ 
ment  to  anything  in  the  West,  with  machinery  which  is 
the  last  word  in  modern  development.  On  account  of 
the  many  labour-saving  devices  the  employees  are  few, 
but  they  appear  happy  and  are  well  paid. 

At  Changteh,  in  Honan  province,  one  of  the  sights 
shown  to  the  visitor  is  the  golden-tiled  Byzantine  roof 
covering  the  great  mausoleum  of  Yuan  Shih-kai,  China  s 
so-called  “strong  man,”  whose  brief  emperorship  has 
here  a  pathetic  effort  at  remembrance.  But  in  that  same 
city  a  sight  far  more  significant  of  present-day  China  is 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


37 


the  large  number  of  factory  chimneys,  indicative  of  an 
ever-increasing  mass  of  people  attracted  from  the  country¬ 
side  to  industrial  life  with  all  the  complications  which 
that  life  involves.  The  social  worker  in  such  a  district 
realizes  that  even  while  books  and  newspapers  which 
discuss  Yuan  Shih-kai  as  a  “  cloud-compeller  ”  are  being 
turned  out  of  the  Press,  his  day  has  gone  by,  and  that 
what  China  is  called  upon  to  meet  is  not  merely  the 
grandiose  schemes  of  another  would-be  Napoleon,  but 
an  industrial  development  necessitating  profound  social 
disturbances. 

The  portion  of  China  least  affected  by  the  industrial 
revolution  as  yet  is  the  North-West — Shensi,  Kansu  and 
the  new  dominions  (Chinese  Turkestan).  From  the 
nearest  Chinese  railway  (in  Honan  Province)  to  Ti-hwa-fu 
in  Turkestan  is  three  months’  cart  travel.  Yet  it  is 
through  this  very  region  that  the  shortest  route  from 
Europe  to  the  Far  East  will  run  when  the  Lunghai 
railway,  by  which  the  traveller  now  goes  from  Shanghai 
to  within  five  days  of  Sianfu  (Shensi),  is  continued  through 
Sianfu,  Lanchow  (the  capital  of  Kansu),  and  Ti-hwa-fu, 
and  on  to  the  Eastern  Europe  railway  systems.  Along 
the  railways,  as  along  the  steamer  routes,  factories 
spring  up  dealing  with  the  raw  produce  of  the  district  : 
cotton,  indigo,  silk,  hemp,  flour,  maize,  sugar,  tobacco, 
skins,  hides,  etc.,  products  which  were  previously  con¬ 
veyed  laboriously  to  the  distant  coast  for  export,  or,  if 
treated  locally,  were  done  so  only  in  a  crude  way  for 
local  consumption.  All  of  which  means  that  in  whole 
districts,  numbers  of  the  people  who  were  once  only 
unskilled  carriers  are  being  transformed  into  skilled 
factory  workers.  And  unhappily  this  change,  so  far  as 
it  is  due  to  the  enterprise  of  the  employers,  is  made 


38 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


— with  a  few  honourable  exceptions — with  a  view  to 
profits  only  ;  there  is  no  care  for  the  workers.  The  loss 
of  life  and  limb  through  the  absence  of  elementary 
precautions  is  heavy ;  and  though  the  carelessness  and 
the  maddening  irresponsibility  of  the  employee  make 
the  problem  difficult,  the  insistence  upon  reasonable 
safeguards  yet  remains  an  obligation  to  be  met  by  those 
who  are  developing  Chinese  industries. 

If  such  changes  as  we  have  outlined  are  not  to 
involve  a  decline  in  the  physique  and  morals  of  the 
people  throughout  wide  areas,  it  behoves  those  who 
have  the  country’s  welfare  at  heart  to  be  instant  in 
devising  plans  to  meet  the  new  social  need,  to  be 
patient  in  training  workers  to  carry  out  such  plans,  and 
unwearying  in  preparing  a  body  of  public  opinion  which 
will  make  their  success  possible.  This  is  significantly 
illustrated  by  the  action  of  the  Kailan  Mining  Company, 
one  of  the  most  important  coal  enterprises  in  China. 
This  Company  has  not  waited  for  the  compulsion  due 
to  discontent  amongst  its  workers,  but  has  itself  in¬ 
stituted  a  social  welfare  department.  For  the  head  of 
this  department  they  invited  a  most  able  worker,  a  man 
with  exceptional  natural  gifts,  with  wide  experience  of 
Chinese  labour  problems  in  Shantung,  as  well  as  of 
Chinese  Labour  Corps  work  in  France,  and  with  years  of 
training  in  scientific,  sociological,  and  religious  questions. 
Such  enterprises  are  both  humane  and  politic,  but 
unfortunately  they  are  as  yet  but  too  rare,  and  mean¬ 
time  the  cotton  mills  and  lace  factories  which  are 
springing  up  in  so  many  directions  are  repeating  the 
sorry  mistakes  of  Lancashire  and  Nottingham  in  the 
old  bad  days. 

In  this  connection  we  see  some  good  come  out  of  the 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


39 


disorganization  of  the  country.  Given  steady  govern¬ 
ment  and  railway  extension,  the  rush  from  the  country¬ 
side  to  the  mines  and  cities  would  be  greatly  accelerated, 
and  whole  hordes  of  men  with  no  mental  or  moral 
preparation  for  so  great  a  change  would  come  into  the 
new  industrial  world.  They  would  enter  it  not  step  by 
step  as  did  the  factory  workers  in  the  West,  but  at  one 
bound  would  reach  a  highly-organized,  publicity-lit  arena, 
where  the  whole  machinery  of  Employers’  Federations  and 
Labourers’  Unions  is  spread  before  them ;  where  lock¬ 
outs  and  strikes  are  fully  understood ;  where  the  shop 
steward  is  already  replacing  the  union  official ;  and 
where  the  exploitation  of  labour  for  political  purposes 
has  already  begun. 

As  things  are,  the  rate  of  China’s  industrial  develop¬ 
ment  is  retarded  by 

{a)  The  unsettled  state  of  the  country.  Mills  and  work¬ 
shops  instead  of  being  built  in  uncongested  districts 
have,  for  the  sake  of  protection,  to  be  put  up  within 
the  walls  of  cities.  And  even  in  the  shelter  of  a  city, 
large  manufacturers  are  not  free  from  apprehension. 
When  a  military  governor  is  driven  out,  his  successor 
finds  it  necessary  “  for  the  safety  of  the  city  ”  to  levy 
a  “  voluntary  loan  ”  from  such  men  in  order  to  pay  his 
troops  and  so  dissuade  them  from  looting.  Each  new 
local  “  government  ”  begins  its  regime  with  a  flourish  of 
trumpets,  and  with  the  inevitable  loan  for  “  recon¬ 
struction.”  There  is  no  reconstruction,  but  there  is 
embarrassment  for  business. 

(b)  The  “ li-kin  ”  duties  locally  imposed.  The  Chinese 
importer,  whose  business  is  hundreds  of  miles  away  from 
the  coast,  having  paid  his  import  duty  at  the  port  of 
entry,  has  not  finished  with  the  duty  problem.  His 


40 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


carts  or  boats  may  be  held  up  between  one  province  and 
another ;  they  may  have  to  pay  further  duty  before 
entering  his  city.  Goods  from  abroad  are  nominally 
free  from  further  import  duty,  and  foreigners  living  in 
the  interior  can,  by  recognized  rights  under  treaties, 
insist  upon  this.  But  Chinese  subjects  have  no  redress, 
whether  the  goods  be  originally  produced  in  China  or 
abroad.  Needless  to  say  there  is  no  legality  about 
these  taxes — generally  known  as  “  li-kin  ”  ;  they  are 
imposed  arbitrarily  by  the  provincial  authorities,  which 
means  to-day  by  the  militarists  who  happen  to  hold 
down  that  portion  of  the  country. 

(c)  Distrust  of  directorates.  Visitors  to  the  great 
Chinese  departmental  stores  in  Hong-Kong  or  Shanghai, 
or  the  tin  mines  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  would  often 
declare  the  Chinese  equal  to  the  direction  of  any  vast 
enterprise.  In  private  concerns  splendid  results  are 
indeed  obtained.  Co-operation  on  a  large  scale  can  be 
found  in  trade  guilds,  secret  societies,  banking  com¬ 
binations.  It  is  when  bureaucracy  appears  that  disaster 
follows.  Directly  the  enterprise  becomes  “  official  ”  one 
begins  to  tremble  for  it.  In  Borneo,  Malay,  Australia, 
California,  the  Chinese  flourish.  They  are  often  the 
largest  shareholders  in  the  leading  businesses.  From 
their  ranks  come  munificent,  public-spirited  citizens, 
contributing  freely  to  municipal  enterprise.  At  home 
in  China  this  is  changed.  And  the  reason  is  obvious  : 
in  the  one  case  there  is  confidence  in  the  administration  ; 
in  the  other  there  is  none. 

Yet  in  spite  of  many  retarding  forces  the  industrializa¬ 
tion  of  China  does  proceed,  and  with  it  the  need  of  open- 
eyed,  magnanimous  treatment  of  the  problems — social, 
moral,  economic — which  it  brings  in  its  train. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK :  PART  II 


Of  the  other  developments  which  go  to  the  making  of 
the  new  framework  of  Chinese  life,  the  most  conspicuous 
are  those  in  connection  with  education,  the  Press,  and 
labour  unions. 


Educational  Development 


This  subject  includes  not  only  the  development  of 
the  school  system,  but  the  use  made  by  Government 
and  local  authorities,  by  guilds  and  societies,  of  various 
means  to  dispel  old  prejudices,  inculcate  new  ideas, 
and  generally  inform  public  opinion. 

For  the  general  question  of  Government  schools  the 
reader  is  referred  to  Chapter  V.  It  may 
Schooisment  t>e  we^>  however,  to  give  here  the  con¬ 
sidered  opinion  of  one  of  the  greatest 
humanists  whom  the  West  has  sent  to  China,  Professor 
L.  R.  0.  Bevan  of  the  Peking  Government  University, 
who  has  served  China  well  for  over  twenty  years. 
Writing  with  intimate  knowledge  of  the  actual  condi¬ 
tions  existing  in  the  Government  schools,  Professor 
Bevan,  after  reviewing  the  statistics  of  primary  educa¬ 
tion  during  the  preceding  years,  says  : — 

“  From  this  very  slight  examination  of  the  statistics 
of  primary  education  of  the  last  few  years,  the  con¬ 
clusion  would  seem  to  be  that  the  policy  laid  down  by 
the  Government  is  in  the  right  direction  and  that  it 


42 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


is  bearing  fruit,  even  though  the  harvest  is  coming  in 
slowly.  The  rate  of  progress  of  the  first  three  years  of 
the  Republic  has  not  been  as  rapid  in  the  succeeding 
three  years.  This  would  naturally  be  expected.  The 
slowing  down  of  the  rate  of  progress  is  inevitable,  but 
taking  into  consideration  the  serious  political  unrest, 
the  widespread  civil  war  conditions,  and  the  consequent 
severe  financial  stringency,  the  fact  that  there  has  been 
any  advance  at  all  is  a  real  ground  for  optimistic 
expectation  for  the  future.  Given  a  real  political  settle¬ 
ment  and  a  stable  return  to  normal  experiences,  there 
is  every  reason  to  hope  for  steady  educational  advance. 
One  sees  a  larger  proportion  of  teachers  viewing  educa¬ 
tion  as  a  profession  to  be  followed  for  its  own  sake  ; 
one  sees  a  wider  view  among  those  who  are  responsible 
for  the  direction  of  education  and  educational  institu¬ 
tions  ;  one  sees  among  students  a  more  easy  yielding 
to  educational  discipline  in  all  its  forms,  and  among  a 
section  of  them  at  any  rate  a  more  earnest  pursuit  of 
what  is  offered  for  those  who  are  honestly  striving ;  one 
sees  a  growing  sense  of  corporateness  in  the  individual 
institutions  themselves,  evidenced  by  the  formation  of 
school  and  college  societies  and  clubs,  magazines,  and 
other  corporate  activities.  Whether  these  are  for  sport 
or  for  social  welfare  or  for  educational  advancement, 
they  are  the  signs  of  a  growing  self-consciousness,  that 
the  institutions  of  the  educational  world  are  finding 
themselves  living  and  growing  organisms.  Granted  that 
statistics  may  be  misleading,  granted  that  these  other 
evidences  are  intangible  impressions,  perhaps,  rather 
than  hard  facts,  there  is  nevertheless  the  justification 
for  those  who  look  forward  with  expectation.” 1 

1  Quoted  in  Peking  :  A  Social  Survey,  by  S.  D.  Gamble,  pp.  144-5. 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


43 


Public  lectures  are  provided  by  the  Government  in 
,  ,  H  many  parts  of  the  country.  In  the  early 
as  £ayS  0f  ^jie  RepUbpc  there  were  leaders 
sincerely  convinced  that  an  instructed  democracy  alone 
could  save  China.  There  was  a  sufficient  number  of 
these  leaders  to  insist  upon  an  attempt  being  made  to 
carry  into  wide  areas  of  the  country  a  working  knowledge 
of  the  principles  and  the  responsibilities  of  democratic 
rule.  Lecturers  were  sent  out  to  give  such  instruction. 
Among  those  first  sent  there  was  a  proportion  of  men 
with  the  qualifications  and  enthusiasm  necessary.  But 
these  very  qualifications  soon  forced  their  owners  into 
executive  work  in  the  Government  itself,  while  men 
who  took  up  the  lecturing  for  the  sake  of  a  livelihood 
were  only  content  to  work  for  the  $10.00  per  month 
salary  until  a  more  remunerative  job  presented  itself. 
The  machinery  thus  created  has  continued  in  a 
perfunctory  manner  to  this  day,  but  the  results  are 
woefully  disappointing.  Anyone  who  has  attempted  to 
lecture  on  social  and  political  subjects  to  a  general 
audience  knows  what  a  tax  is  made  on  the  lecturer. 
Imagine  such  men  having  to  speak  in  the  same  hall, 
day  after  day,  month  after  month,  to  an  audience  which 
is  generally  apathetic  and  of  which  a  good  proportion  is 
made  up  of  people  who  only  want  a  comfortable  resting 
place  and  a  means  of  whiling  away  an  idle  hour.  Any 
Christian  evangelist  in  China  knows  the  type.  The 
evangelist  is  helped  through  his  depressing  hours  by 
the  vividness  of  his  faith  and  the  depth  of  his  personal 
religion,  and  even  so  he  finds  his  task  difficult  enough. 
But  for  the  public  lecturer  on  political  subjects,  the 
apathetic  faces  confronting  him  have  a  deadening  effect. 
In  one  or  two  centres  where  a  “  model  ”  Lecture  Hall 


44 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


is  at  work,  with  good  equipment  in  charts,  models, 
phonograph,  lantern-slides,  etc.,  and  where  there  is  a 
large  staff  whose  members  keep  one  another  fresh,  good 
work  is  done.  But  for  the  lecturer  in  ordinary  towns 
and  small  cities  the  task  is  very  dreary.  Party  politics 
and  religious  questions  are  not  allowed  in  the  Govern¬ 
ment  Lecture  Halls. 

The  record  of  this  Lecture  Hall  scheme  is  instructive 
not  only  on  its  own  account  but  because  it  is  in 
parable  the  story  of  the  failure — up  to  the  present — of 
the  Chinese  Republic.  In  all  branches  of  public  life  the 
same  story  is  repeated  (with  one  partial  exception 
mentioned  below).  For  the  Civil  Service,  the  Judiciary, 
the  Army,  and  other  branches  of  public  service,  com¬ 
prehensive  schemes  are  put  forth — schemes  which  appear 
feasible,  and  which  are  excellent  in  their  aim ;  but 
their  promoters  are  either  ignorant  of  the  obstacles  to 
be  overcome,  or,  in  a  Micawber-like  spirit  they  shirk 
a  square  facing  of  the  difficulties,  and  launch  their 
scheme  “  hoping  that  something  will  turn  up  ”  to 
counteract  the  dangers  to  which  they  cannot  close  their 
eyes. 

Generally  speaking,  the  main  difficulties  in  carrying 
out  these  schemes  are  the  lack  of  a  sustained,  intelligent 
public  interest ;  the  lack  of  funds  to  support  the 
necessary  agents ;  and  the  lack  of  trained,  disinterested 
agents  to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  the  schemes.  The 
partial  exception  to  the  above  is  in  the  educational 
world  where,  although  the  number  of  the  right  sort  of 
teachers  is  insufficient,  real  heroism  and  disinterested¬ 
ness  are  displayed  by  large  numbers  of  men  who  could 
improve  their  finances  by  leaving  their  scholastic 
calling. 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


45 


Theatres 


The  Chinese  theatre  is  being  increasingly  used  as 
an  educator.  The  motives  of  new  plays 
are  frequently  problems  of  social  reform. 
There  is  an  Actors’  Apprentice  School  in  Peking,  a 
private  foundation,  which  trains  boys  for  the  stage. 
The  entrance  age  is  between  ten  and  twelve  years  of 
age,  and  in  addition  to  the  technique  of  their  art,  the 
pupils  are  instructed  as  to  the  possibilities  of  the  theatre 
as  an  educational  power. 

The  Summer  School  idea  is  growing  in  China.  Camps 
and  Conferences  are  becoming  increasingly 
popular.  Parades  and  mass  meetings  in 
connection  with  burning  questions  are 
largely  employed.  These  are  generally  organized  by 
Students’  or  Labour  Unions,  though  the  merchant  class 
— up  to  the  present  strangely  apathetic  to  general 
questions — is  beginning  through  its  guilds  and  Chambers 
of  Commerce  to  participate  in  these  activities. 


Summer 

Schools 


The  Chinese  Renaissance 

Allied  to  the  subject  of  education,  but  reaching  out 
to  all  phases  of  the  national  life,  is  the  movement  known 
as  “  The  Chinese  Renaissance,”  a  movement  by  no 
means  confined  within  scholastic  bounds.  Again  and 
again  in  China  to-day  the  observer  is  reminded  of  pictures 
of  life  in  the  Europe  of  the  Middle  Ages — the  general 
break-up  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire ;  the  roving 
licentious  soldiery  ;  the  turbulent  robber  barons  ;  and 
above  all,  the  practical  dictatorship  within  certain 
provinces  of  military  chiefs :  the  parallel  to  all  this 
we  see  in  China  to-day;  and  with  it  go  the  rest¬ 
lessness,  the  impatience  of  control,  the  growing  resent- 


46 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


ment  against  religious  and  political  shibboleths,  and 
the  consuming  intellectual  curiosity,  which  marked  the 
European  phenomenon.  As  in  the  Italian  and  German 
Universities  of  the  Middle  Ages  (as  distinguished  from 
those  of  Paris  and  Oxford),  the  majority  of  students 
in  China  will  not  give  sufficient  time  to  study  any 
one  question  thoroughly,  but  hurriedly  pass  on  from 
subject  to  subject,  tasting  all,  exhausting  none.  And 
the  instruments  of  the  Chinese  Renaissance  are  those  of 
the  European  :  the  substitution  of  the  vulgar  tongue  for 
a  dead  classical  language  ;  the  liberty  of  the  Press  ;  the 
accessibility  of  the  great  schools. 

The  centre  of  this  movement  has  undoubtedly  been 
the  Government  University  of  Peking,1  where  there  is 
to  be  found  a  genuinely  disinterested  and  able  group 
of  Chinese  educationists  with  high  qualifications — with 
some,  those  of  Chinese  scholarship,  with  others,  those 
of  the  Universities  of  France,  Germany,  America, 
Britain.  These  men  have  attracted  thousands  of 
students  annually  from  all  parts  of  China.  By  means 
of  a  special  endowment — fortunately  out  of  the  reach 
of  the  Government  authorities — the  University  is  able 
to  invite  from  America  or  Europe  one  outstanding  man 


1  Two  institutions  to-day  are  known  by  the  name  “  Peking  Uni¬ 
versity.”  Years  ago  the  title  was  adopted  by  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Mission  for  their  Peking  educational  centre,  when  there  was  no 
Government  University.  This  M.E.M.  enterprise  has  since  grown  into 
a  large  union  scheme.  But  meantime  the  Government  has  instituted 
its  own  University.  For  the  present,  by  an  amicable  arrangement 
between  the  two  Senates,  the  names  used  in  English  official  corre¬ 
spondence  are  “  The  National  University,”  referring  to  the  Govern¬ 
ment  Institution,  and  “  Peking  University,”  referring  to  the  Missionary 
one.  In  Chinese  notifications  the  former  is  called  the  “  Peking 
University”  and  the  latter  “  Yenching  University”  (Yenching  being 
the  old  classical  name  for  Peking). 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


47 


each  year  as  special  lecturer.  Dr  Dewey  filled  this  post 
in  1918  and  1919,  and  the  Hon.  Bertrand  Russell  in 
1920  and  1921.  Of  the  three  thousand  students  enrolled 
each  year  in  the  University,  not  more  than  a  third  take 
a  full  course.  Many,  after  enrolment,  are  scarcely  seen 
in  the  lecture  rooms ;  they  take  up  Press  work,  or 
political  propaganda.  The  freedom  offered  to  the  student 
in  his  selection  of  classes  is  also  very  wide.  The  Uni¬ 
versity  resembles  those  of  the  Middle  Ages  rather  than 
the  universities  of  our  own  day.  Notwithstanding  all 
this  much-to-be  regretted  laxity,  the  modern  university 
in  China  is  a  hive  of  ideas.  La  Jeunesse  and  The 
New  Tide ,  the  two  early  magazines  of  the  Renaissance 
movement,  have  been  followed  by  scores  of  others, 
short-lived  for  the  most  part,  but  all  indicative  of  the 
students’  eagerness  to  express  themselves. 

But  the  Renaissance,  with  its  motto,  “  Save  the  country 
by  science  and  democracy,”  has  been  too  democratic  to 
be  confined  to  any  one  centre  or  any  one  class.  It  has 
caught  up  in  its  tide  the  official,  mercantile,  and  artisan 
classes  in  various  parts  of  the  country.  It  claims  to 
be  fearless  in  investigation,  catholic  in  sympathy,  free 
in  thought.1  If  any  one  figure  can  be  said  to  be  the 
centre  of  the  Renaissance,  that  figure  is  Dr  Hu  (Hu  Shih), 
Professor  of  Literature  at  the  University,  whose  courage 
is  only  equalled  by  his  charm,  and  who  is  as  honest  as 
he  is  heroic. 

The  greatest  battle  yet  fought  by  the  Renaissance 
movement  has  been  in  connection  with  the  substitution 
in  current  literature,  official  documents,  and,  above  all, 
in  the  Press,  of  the  spoken  language  of  to-day  for 
the  extremely  difficult  language  of  the  Chinese  classics 

1  See  Appendix  A,  “  Platform  of  Renaissance.” 


48 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


(Wenli).  So  long  as  the  daily  paper  was  published  in 
Wenli,  it  could  only  be  understood  by  the  few.  But 
when  the  paper  is  published  in  Mandarin  (the  spoken 
language  that  is  current  through  three-fourths  of  China) 
a  Chinese  who  has  mastered  a  thousand  characters  can 
make  out  the  main  drift  of  the  articles  and  news 
paragraphs.  Words  here  and  there  will  be  beyond  him, 
but  the  context  will  supply  the  sense,  and  the  reader’s 
vocabulary  is  quickly  and  insensibly  widened. 

It  was  not  until  the  National  University  group  had 
been  publishing  in  Mandarin  for  over  a  year  that  the 
conservatives  in  Chinese  literature  awoke  to  what  was 
being  done ;  but  the  attack  then  made  was  bitter. 
After  six  years’  struggle  the  battle  is  now  won,  and 
whatever  be  the  permanent  literary  form  adopted,  the 
shackles  of  a  dead  language  have  been  lifted  from  the 
Chinese  mind. 

Whatever  may  be  our  opinion  of  the  Renaissance 
leaders’  theories,  they  deserve  our  gratitude  and 
admiration  for  their  disinterestedness,  their  loyalty  to 
truth  as  they  see  it,  their  courage,  their  amazing  in¬ 
dustry,  and  in  some  cases,  particularly  that  of  Dr  Hu, 
their  fine  courtesy  to  opponents.  Their  attitude  towards 
religion  is  discussed  later  in  this  volume. 

Labour  Unions 

The  most  startling  and  significant  recent  development 
in  China  has  been  the  rapid  growth  of  labour  unions. 
Here  the  theorist  has  been  proved  to  be  in  the  wrong. 
In  a  country  of  four  hundred  million  people  it  was 
considered  improbable,  if  not  impossible,  for  any  union 
of  labour  in  any  one  district  to  insist  upon  a  minimum 


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THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


49 


wage,  since  the  influx  from  other  districts  of  those  who 
lived  below  that  economic  line  would  provide  the  em¬ 
ployers  with  all  the  labour  required.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
the  theorists,  the  success  of  the  labour  unions  in  obtaining 
their  demands  is  a  fact.  To  what  their  success  may  be 
due  we  cannot  say  here  with  any  certitude ;  we  can 
only  put  forward  a  few  suggestions  : — 

(а)  The  lack  of  a  well-organized  employers’  federation. 
The  temptation  to  the  owner  to  get  ahead  of  his 
rivals  in  profits  seems  greater  than  that  of  the 
labourer  to  take  the  job  out  of  another  worker’s 
hands.1 

(б)  The  flair  of  the  Chinese  for  secret  societies  enables 

them  quickly  to  bring  into  action,  for  the  further¬ 
ance  of  labour  union  plans,  an  organization  which 
is  far-reaching  and  determined. 

(c)  The  older  members  of  the  unions,  who  may  wish 

to  prevent  new-comers  from  getting  into  touch 
with  the  contractors  who  supply  labour,  have  the 
advantage  of  knowing  the  ground.  They  can 
prevent  those  who  are  prepared  to  take  lower 
wages  from  procuring  lodging  and  food  within 
their  means.  They  know,  too,  both  how  to  keep 
within  the  letter  of  the  local  laws  and  how  to 
make  use  of  the  ill-paid,  often  non-paid,  police  of 
the  district. 

( d )  Stronger  than  any  other  reason,  however,  is  the 
uneasy  feeling  in  the  minds  of  the  capitalist 
class — particularly  where  there  are  foreigners  or 

1  In  Malay  in  1916  the  writer  found  English  planters  complaining 
that  rubber  plantations  too  near  Singapore  were  at  a  disadvantage, 
because  Chinese  planters  there  could  not  resist  cheap  methods,  which 
damaged  the  market  for  neighbouring  estates. 

D 


50 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


foreign-trained  Chinese  in  charge — that  the  con¬ 
ditions  under  which  labour  has  been  performed 
in  the  past  have  been  undesirable,  if  not  re¬ 
prehensible.  “  There’s  no  need  to  go  to  extremes, 
or  get  sentimental  about  things,  but  the  poor 
beggars  have  had  a  rough  time  of  it  ”  is  the  sort 
of  expression  one  hears  used  by  ”  the  common- 
sense  business  man  ”  to  convey  this  feeling  of 
dissatisfaction. 

Unfortunately  for  the  genuine  labourer,  his  union  is 
being  already  exploited  by  the  hastily  “  trained  ”  pro¬ 
pagandist  of  extreme  political  views.  The  communist 
is  abroad  in  the  land,  and  the  wretched  misgovernment 
of  the  country  under  military  and  political  adventurers 
gives  him  his  opportunity.  “  Things  could  not  be 
worse,”  say  his  hearers,  "  and  this  communist  system 
may  be  better.”  The  political  parties  of  what  the 
Marxian  would  call  the  bourgeoisie  stamp — a  term  which 
the  new  “  intellectual  ”  in  China  uses  with  great  gusto — 
have  also  been  using  the  labour  unions  as  a  means  of 
annoying  or  defeating  their  opponents.  No  action  of  the 
professional  politicians  so  shows  up  their  short-sighted¬ 
ness,  or  could  be  more  fatal  to  the  interests  of  their 
social  caste.  The  labour  union  which  served  the  one 
party  yesterday  is  serving  its  opponents  to-day ;  it  is 
weakening  both  of  them,  and  is  itself  growing  stronger 
in  so  doing.  But  unfortunately  for  the  labourer,  the 
labour  union  in  its  very  advance  is  ceasing  to  be  an 
instrument  for  the  social  improvement  of  the  worker, 
and  is  developing  into  another  political  party  that  is 
losing  sight  of  its  original  ends  through  its  preoccupation 
with  the  means. 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


51 


All  this  gives  significance  to  the  growing  fear  looming 
up  like  a  black  cloud  upon  the  horizon  of  the  Chinese 
merchant  and  official  classes  to-day,  namely,  the  fear 
of  Bolshevism.  There  is  no  doubt  about  Bolshevist 
propaganda  being  active  in  China.  The  long  ill-defended 
northern  border  giving  easy  access  to  China  through 
Chinese  Turkestan  and  Mongolia,  combined  with  the 
Soviet  domination  of  Urga,  the  Mongolian  capital,  make 
the  introduction  of  Soviet  agents  and  literature  an 
easy  matter.  The  labour  troubles  of  October  1922  in 
Hankow  show  features  different  from  the  genuine  labour 
agitations  in  the  Chinese  shipping  world  of  1921,  or 
the  semi-political  railway  strikes  of  September  1922. 
In  Hankow  the  special  note  was  one  of  revolt  against 
all  control  exercised  by  capital.  And  here  again  the 
short-sighted  greed  of  merchants  and  officials  has 
weakened  what  should  be  the  strong  bulwark  against 
Bolshevism  in  China,  the  allegiance  of  the  peasant 
proprietor.  More  than  to  any  other  single  cause  the 
Russian  Soviet’s  rise  in  power  was  due  to  its  ability  to 
confiscate  huge  private  estates  and  royal  domains,  and 
so  to  give  to  the  peasant  the  land  he  tilled.  But  China 
is  already  a  land  of  peasant  proprietors,  and  it  would 
seem  to  be  to  the  interests  of  millions  to  avoid  the 
Marxian  system. 

But  the  peasant  proprietor  of  to-day  in  China,  unlike 
his  father  of  fifty  years  ago,1  has  become,  owing  to 
the  swift  industrializing  of  the  country,  largely  de¬ 
pendent  on  the  railway  and  the  produce-agent  if  the 
products  of  his  farm  are  to  benefit  him.  In  other  words 
even  the  Chinese  farmer  is  to-day  faced  with  the  difficulty 
of  distribution  as  well  as  that  of  production.  The  Hupeh 

1  See  Chapter  II,  p.  24, 


52 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


farmer,  for  example,  wishing  to  get  his  grain  down  to 
Hankow,  finds  that  he  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  railway 
administration.  All  that  the  railway  can  wring  out  of 
the  people  it  does,  in  order  that  the  central  government 
(which  gets  the  lamb’s  share)  and  the  Tu-chuns 1  (who 
get  the  lion’s  share)  may  be  fed.  No  thought  for  the 
ruined  farmer,  or  the  black  revolt  in  his  heart,  which 
results  in  his  readiness  to  consider  Bolshevist  propaganda, 
deters  them.  And  when  the  farmer  does  get  his  produce 
to  Hankow,  he  has  to  meet  fresh  robbery  in  dispos¬ 
ing  of  it.  The  retailers,  buying  through  the  wholesale 
dealers  who  can  ensure  regular  delivery  at  stated  periods, 
have  no  margin  to  deal  with  the  farmer  direct.  And 
when  he  succeeds  in  making  his  way  to  the  wholesale 
produce-agent,  he  is  at  the  latter’s  mercy,  since  he  must 
either  accept  the  low  price  offered,  or  else  pay  ruinous 
charges  for  demurrage  at  the  railway  siding.  And  since 
he  dare  not  return  home  without  the  wherewithal  to 
pay  a  land  tax,2  the  peasant  takes  the  price  offered 
by  the  wholesale  house  and  returns  home  with  rage  in 
his  heart.  He  may  not  be  able  to  state  his  conviction 
in  so  many  words,  but  the  feeling  in  his  poor  bewildered 
mind  is  that  whatever  his  legal  title  to  his  ancestral 
holding  may  be,  he  has  become  in  fact  a  mere  serf. 

1  Military  Governors. 

2  This  land  tax  is  the  illegal  imposition  of  the  military  authorities, 
who  are  generally  levying  the  tax  of  two  or  three  years  ahead  ;  in 
certain  districts  of  Shantung,  Chihli,  and  Szechwan  the  land  tax  for 
1924  has  already  (October  1922)  been  levied.  These  militarists  ignore 
the  fact  that  the  farmer  has  already  paid  this  to  some  previous 
“  government,”  and  may  have  to  pay  it  yet  again  when  his  present 
rapacious  “  governors  ”  are  ousted. 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


53 


Social  Changes 


The  social  values  of  Chinese  life  are  being  rapidly 
The  Rise  of  altered  by  the  industrial  development, 
the  Merchant  The  writer  found  the  same  tendency  in 
Class  India  :  men  of  good  family  are  refusing 

to  enter  the  already  congested  professions — particularly 
the  legal  and  scholastic — and  are  frankly  making  for 
the  once  despised  “  trade.”  In  China,  where  the  scholar 
and  the  scholar-official  have  been  for  centuries  revered 
beyond  all  others,  the  change  is  of  profound  significance. 
Men  who  have  held  high  office  in  the  Government, 
men  with  reputations  as  scholars,  are  to-day  found  in 
commercial  enterprises  which  a  generation  ago  they 
would  have  either  considered  altogether  beneath  their 
dignity  or  have  entered  into  secretly.  We  find  an 
ex-premier  becoming  head  of  an  insurance  company, 
and  on  the  other  hand,  a  man  is  pushed  into  the 
premiership  because  he  has  become  so  prominent  as  a 
banker  that  he  can  tide  the  Government  over  a  financial 
crisis. 

Less  spectacular  but  more  important  is  the  weakening 

The  Weaken-  influence  among  the  peasantry, 

ing  of  Family  The  younger  son  who  was  formerly  thrust 
Influence  out  world  to  eke  out  the  family 

resources  found  it  natural  to  look  up  to  the  elder  brother 
who  remained  on  the  land.  The  teaching  of  the  sages 
was  here  reinforced  by  financial  considerations ;  the 
elder  brother  whose  goodwill  would  be  specially  valuable 
on  the  father’s  death  had  to  be  heard  with  respect. 
Such  a  system  might  often  result  in  tyranny  but  it  did 
make  for  social  solidarity  :  it  helped  to  keep  together 
the  peasant  home  ;  and  China  remained  a  country  of 


54 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


small  holdings,  where  it  was  the  concern  of  the  mass  of 
the  people  to  preserve  the  country  intact. 

But  to-day  it  is  frequently  the  younger  brother  who 
becomes  the  wealthier  member  of  the  family.  In  a  few 
years’  time  a  countryman  who  comes  down  to  Hong- 
Kong  as  a  chair  coolie,  who  keeps  sober  and  refrains 
from  gambling,  can  get  together  sufficient  to  return  to 
his  own  district,  buy  land,  take  the  wife  of  his  choice, 
and  snap  his  fingers  at  father  and  elder  brother  alike. 
He  has  earned  his  money  in  an  atmosphere  where 
individualism  is  rampant,  where  filial  piety  is  forgotten, 
where  it  is  each  man  for  himself.  He  comes  back  with 
ideas  on  filial  piety  very  different  from  those  he  had 
when  leaving  his  father’s  house.  And  his  example  infects 
the  younger  generation  in  his  village.  Whether  as 
transport  workers,  as  labourers  under  a  municipality, 
as  miners,  mechanics,  house-boys  or — and  this  class  far 
outnumbers  all  the  others — as  recruits  to  the  army, 
we  see  a  steadily  increasing  number  of  unsophisticated 
rural  workers  brought  into  contact  with  the  industrial 
individualism  of  Europeanized  conditions.  This  experi¬ 
ence  sends  them  back — when  they  do  go  back — with  a 
sorely  weakened  regard  for  the  old  family  authority, 
which  augurs  ill  for  China’s  social  stability  in  the  future. 

Social  evils  in  the  great  cities  have  grown  appallingly 
since  1911.  Two  main  causes  can  be  dis¬ 
cerned  for  this  growth  :  the  weakening  of 
the  old  sanctions,  and  the  increased  facilities  for  vice.1 

Prostitution  was  widespread  before  1911,  but  in  the 


Social  Evils 


1  A  full  statement  of  police  regulations  for  prostitutes  and  brothels 
n  Peking  appears  as  Appendix  VIII  of  Peking  :  A  Social  Survey,  by 
S.  D.  Gamble. 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK 


55 


interior  cities  (as  distinct  from  international  places  like 
Shanghai)  there  were  a  certain  amount  of  restraint  and 
some  veils  of  decency.  The  aphorisms  of  the  old  classics 
were  outwardly  assented  to.  With  the  substitution  of 
materialistic  philosophy  for  the  Confucian  classics,  the 
former  restraints  disappear  for  “  emancipated  ”  thinkers. 
The  consumption  of  foreign  wines  and  drugs,  in  addition 
to  that  of  opium,  has  increased  greatly.  Gambling  has 
been  so  widespread  for  centuries  that  it  could  hardly 
be  said  to  have  increased.  Indeed  it  is  important  in 
trying  to  form  any  conception  of  Chinese  social  life  to 
remember  that  while  the  opium  question  takes  up  much 
more  space  in  Press  reports  and  pamphlets,  gambling  is 
far  more  widespread  and  deep-seated  than  any  other 
evil  in  the  country. 

The  weakness  in  the  Central  Government  has  been  a 
factor  in  the  growth  of  certain  social  evils.  Local 
authorities  have  repeatedly  obtained  funds  by  winking 
at,  or  even  openly  encouraging,  certain  forms  of  vice, 
which,  given  a  strong  Central  Government,  would  have 
been  repressed.  Increased  facilities  of  transport  are 
making  redlight  districts  available  to  many  to  whom 
the  great  cities  were  formerly  inaccessible.  Advertise¬ 
ments  of  notorious  women  appear  regularly  in  the  daily 
Press,  with  photographs  appended.  Quack  medicines 
and  remedies  fill  shop  after  shop.  The  gramophone 
spreads  suggestive  songs  far  and  wide.  Above  all,  the 
ease  with  which  new-comers  to  the  cities  escape  family 
oversight,  their  freedom  from  that  public  observation 
and  public  opinion  which  encompassed  them  at  home, 
make  for  the  reckless  living  which  confronts  one  in 
great  Chinese  cities  to-day. 


56 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Social  Changes  and  Missionary  Work 

One  result  of  the  migration  to  the  industrial  centres 
is  that  missionary  societies  are  finding  it  necessary  to 
change  both  the  methods  and  location  of  their  work. 
In  the  early  days  the  cities  rejected  them,  while  the 
country  proved  their  best  soil.  To-day  the  work  in 
the  country  is  largely  established  and  is  being  left  to 
the  Chinese  Church,  whereas  in  the  cities  where  com¬ 
paratively  few  church  members  are  to  be  found — though 
the  central  church  buildings  may  have  been  erected 
there  for  the  sake  of  convenience — there  is  need  of 
intensive  work.  This  provides  an  opportunity  of  using 
the  gifts  of  Christians  who  have  migrated  to  the  city 
from  their  village  churches.  These  men  and  women 
bring  the  Gospel  of  Christ  and  Christian  service  to  the 
masses  of  people  who,  formerly  antagonistic  to  new 
religious  teaching,  are  to-day,  though  open  to  conviction, 
rapidly  settling  down  to  sheer  indifference  with  regard 
to  religious  questions  generally. 

One  obvious  reason  for  this  indifference  is  to  be  found 
in  the  increased  facilities  for  amusements  and  luxuries 
which  are  taken  up  with  naive  delight  by  the  industrial 
worker,  who  looks  upon  these  new  features  of  city  life 
as  ministers  to  his  pleasure,  and  fails  to  realize  how 
quickly  they  become  his  masters.  His  participation  in 
the  country  home  duties,  festivities,  and  simple  daily 
pleasures  is  exchanged  for  the  craze  for  more  and  more 
rapid  excitement :  the  leisurely  and  very  occasional 
theatrical  play  has  given  way  to  the  lurid,  breathless 
cinema  ;  the  frugal,  slowly  manipulated  pipe  of  home¬ 
grown  tobacco  is  replaced  by  the  costly,  quickly  con¬ 
sumed  modern  cigarette.  Instead  of  hot  weak  tea  which 


THE  NEW  FRAMEWORK  57 

refreshed  him,  quenched  his  thirst,  and  did  him  no  harm, 
the  city  coolie  will  buy  some  highly  coloured  pink  or 
yellow  iced  drink — in  which  lurk  dangers  many — at 
ten  times  the  cost  of  the  hot  tea. 

It  is  regrettable  that  amusement  with  the  mass  of 
the  industrial  workers  means  not  so  much  amusing 
themselves  as  being  amused.  Healthy  games  in  which 
they  themselves  take  part,  country  walks  for  the 
sake  of  fresh  air,  exercise,  and  scenery,  appeal  in 
some  measure  to  the  students  who  have  been  trained 
to  appreciate  the  value  of  these  things  ;  but  ,tbey  are 
as  yet  without  appeal  to  the  factory  and  other  industrial 
workers.  One  of  the  most  prominent  efforts  recently 
made  is  that  of  a  young  missionary  who  obtained  per¬ 
mission  from  a  Christian  manufacturer  to  let  his  boy 
workers  have  an  hour  every  day  for  outdoor  games 
and  the  fundamentals  of  education  at  the  Church 
Institute,  and  an  outing  and  open-air  service  on  the 
hills  or  by  the  river  every  Sunday. 

This  type  of  work  could  be  beneficially  reproduced, 
given  social  workers  who  could  persuade  the  employers 
to  afford  the  opportunity  and  the  employees  to  take 
advantage  of  it. 


PART  II 


THE  CHRISTIAN  CONTRIBUTION 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 

This,  then,  is  the  arena  in  which  we  now  make  an 
effort  to  see  the  Christian  evangelist  at  work.  With  a 
task  so  varied  it  is  clear  that  varied  methods  must  be 
used. 

The  highly  organized  condition  of  a  modern  Chinese 
city  affords  the  evangelist  excellent  opportunities  for 
his  work.  But  he  must  take  pains  to  understand  the 
organization.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  stand  up  at  the 
first  promising  street  corner  and  begin  to  preach  the 
Gospel.  By  doing  so  he  may  create,  quite  unnecessarily, 
an  antagonism  which  will  take  much  time  and  effort 
to  disperse.  “  Who  are  these  strangers  who  thus 
make  free  with  our  street  ?  Why  should  they  consider 
that  we  need  teaching  by  them  as  if  we  were  ignorant 
bumpkins  ?  We  would  have  them  know  that  we  in 
this  town  are  people  who  value  learning  as  much  as 
they.  This  community  invites  good  teachers  for  its 
schools  and  pays  them  well  also.”  With  such  criticism 
we  can  sympathize,  even  though  we  know  that  it  is 
based  on  a  misunderstanding  of  our  motives.  It  might 
all  have  been  avoided  if  we  had  taken  the  trouble  to 


58 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


59 


make  our  way  first  to  the  central  educational  organization 
in  the  town,  there  to  explain  our  purpose  in  visiting  the 
city  and  to  ask  that  some  representative  of  the  organi¬ 
zation  would  introduce  us  at  an  opening  meeting.  The 
time  thus  spent  is  not  wasted,  even  if  the  actual  response 
is  not  enthusiastic.  If  the  missionary  be  a  foreigner,1 
it  is  only  ordinary  courtesy  to  call  upon  the  magistrate 
of  the  town,  since  enquiries  would  be  addressed  to  him 
should  the  foreigner  make,  or  meet  with,  trouble. 

There  are  other  useful  points  of  contact.  The  local 
schools  may  be  glad  of  a  “  lecture  ”  ;  there  may  be 
commercial  guilds,  reform  associations,  and  provincial 
assemblies  to  visit.  If  the  evangelist  can  “  lecture  ” 
under  the  auspices  of  a  local  association,  he  has  an 
advantage  at  the  beginning.  Later,  when  he  has 
become  a  general  feature  of  the  landscape,  going  about 
his  work  of  preaching  in  the  mission  hall,  or  holding 
group  meetings  in  schools  or  private  houses,  he  may 
see  very  little  of  his  former  sponsors,  but  the  time  spent 
with  them  has  not  been  in  vain.  They  may  not  enter 
the  Kingdom  themselves,  but  at  least  they  do  not  stand 
at  its  doors  preventing  others  from  so  doing. 

The  evangelist  is  not  troubled  because  he  does  not 
soon  get  large  crowds  to  hear  his  message ;  he  is  more 
concerned  to  secure  intelligent  interest  on  the  part 
of  those  who  come.  Curiously  enough,  the  American 
missionary  has  grasped  this  truth  more  truly  than  has 
his  English  or  Chinese  fellow-worker.  In  some  ways  he 
is  more  disposed  to  think  in  numbers  than  either  of  the 
others ;  in  the  huge  meetings  arranged  to  hear  speakers 
like  Dr  John  Mott,  or  Dr  Sherwood  Eddy,  great  crowds 

1  The  word  “  foreigner  ”  throughout  the  book  is  used  to  denote 
people  of  non-Chinese  nationality. 


60 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


are  gathered ;  but  in  the  ordinary  work  the  American 
missionary  is  quite  as  content  with  a  “  group  meeting  ” 
of  six  as  with  a  “  congregation  ”  of  sixty. 

Owing  to  the  rapid  changes  and  frequent  experi¬ 
ments  in  the  community  itself,  the  missionary  to-day, 
either  Chinese  or  foreign,  has  to  become  increasingly 
flexible  in  his  methods.  “  Try  it  for  a  time,”  says 
the  missionary,  “  and  if  it  won’t  do,  we  needn’t  be 
ashamed  of  dropping  it,  and  trying  some  other  method.” 
Lectures,  small  study  groups,  boy  scouts,  camp-fire 
girls,  international  associations ;  one  after  the  other  of 
these  organizations  he  will  use,  so  long  as  they  help  to 
interpret  Christianity  to  increasing  groups  of  men  and 
women  and  children. 

There  are  two  other  factors  which  make  for  variety 
of  evangelistic  methods :  first,  the  character  of  the 
district — agricultural  or  industrial,  inland  or  coast,  dense 
or  scanty  population,  as  well  as  the  probable  calibre  of 
the  audience  or  individuals  to  be  addressed  ;  and  second, 
the  type  of  missionaries  sent  out  by  particular  societies 
— their  Church  polity,  education,  and  social  background. 
Methods  are  affected  also  by  the  traditions  of  a  mission 
— -whether  it  works  in  highly  organized  large  centres, 
or  whether  it  places  one  or  two  workers  only  in  towns 
thirty  to  fifty  miles  removed  from  their  nearest  foreign 
fellow-workers  ;  whether  salaries  are  guaranteed  or  not ; 
whether  the  government  of  the  mission  be  Congregational, 
Presbyterian  or  Episcopal. 

It  will  be  found  in  actual  practice  that  such  dis¬ 
tinctions  as  regards  the  workers  and  their  methods 
tend  to  become  less  sharp  as  work  develops.  The 
need  for  mutual  help  felt  by  all  Christian  workers,  of 
whatever  race  or  denomination,  makes  for  interchange 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


61 


of  thought  and  service.  The  necessity  of  eliminating 
duplication  as  far  as  possible  has  the  same  effect. 
Particularly  is  it  realized,  as  time  goes  on,  that  the 
method  used  at  the  commencement — a  method  neces¬ 
sarily  foreign  since  it  was  the  only  one  the  worker  knew 
— must  be  adapted  to  Chinese  conditions,  must,  in  fact, 
become  a  Chinese  method. 

Any  attempt  to  detail  an  exhaustive  survey  of  these 
lines  of  work  means  a  whole  volume.  We  can  here 
only  indicate  briefly  certain  broad  divisions. 

Evangelism  amongst  the  Masses 

It  may  be  well  here  to  speak  for  a  moment  of  the 
methods  used  in  the  past,  and  still  used  in  districts 
which  are  virgin  for  Christian  effort,  though,  with  the 
development  of  the  work,  they  are  changed  for  the 
systematic  methods  of  which  we  speak  later. 

There  are  many  ways  of  preaching  the  Gospel,  as  the 
following  incidents  will  prove. 

One  young  and  enthusiastic  English  worker  in  North 
China,  in  company  with  a  Chinese  athletic 
^Lectures1”4  instructor,  both  keenly  desirous  of  making 
known  the  essential  truths  of  Christianity, 
used  to  appear  in  one  small  country  town  or  another, 
with  a  collection  of  tennis  rackets  and  footballs  as  their 
main  visible  assets.  They  would  call  on  the  local 
teachers  of  some  Government  rural  school,  discuss 
with  them  the  need  of  healthy  outdoor  sports  for  their 
pupils,  and  offer  to  give  instruction  in  various  games. 
Such  offers  were  gratefully  accepted,  and  a  couple  of 
hours'  vigorous  running  around  ensued.  Usually  an 
invitation  was  forthcoming  to  the  two  visitors  to  remain 


62 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


a  day  or  two ;  hospitality  was  provided  and  meetings 
arranged  in  the  quiet  evenings,  when  serried  rows  of 
scholars  of  various  ages,  flanked  by  interested,  friendly 
groups  of  town  gentry,  would  listen  to  the  visitors  while 
they  “  lectured.”  (As  in  India,  the  precious  word 
“  lecture  ”  gives  an  opportunity  which  would  not  be  forth¬ 
coming  if  the  new-comer  essayed  to  “  preach.”)  After 
a  visit  of  this  nature,  there  would  be  no  difficulty  in 
arranging  for  further  visits,  or  smoothing  the  way  for  the 
regular  Chinese  evangelist  or  the  Christian  school  teacher 
who  might  wish  to  follow  up  the  work  thus  commenced. 

The  present  writer,  in  conjunction  with  an  old  friend 
of  the  Scandinavian  Alliance  Mission  in 
th^Road  °n  Shensi,  saw  something  of  the  infinite 
variety  with  which  the  Christian  evangelist 
can  adorn  his  work. 

The  two  had  to  reach  a  town  some  twenty  miles  away 
from  the  provincial  capital.  Each  carried  his  bed-quilts 
over  his  shoulder,  while  parcels  of  Scripture  portions — 
generally  one  of  the  Gospels,  or  the  Book  of  the  Acts, 
bound  separately — together  with  a  few  simple  toilet 
articles,  went  into  a  little  canvas  sack.  At  the  gate 
of  the  city  they  found  country  carts,  used  during  the 
busy  season  for  field  purposes — carts  which  still  offered 
for  sensitive  eyes  and  nostrils  undeniable  evidences  of 
their  recent  usage — and  which  were  now  plying  for  hire. 
One  farmer  proprietor,  who  was  his  own  driver,  was 
calling  out  at  the  top  of  his  lungs,  “  Travel  in  my  cart, 
one  cash  a  mile”  (which  meant  that  one  English  mile 
could  be  travelled  for  the  equivalent  of  half  a  farthing). 
The  intending  travellers  clambered  up  the  wheel  and 
over  the  side  of  one  of  the  carts,  rolled  their  bed-quilts 
into  insecure  seats,  and  proceeded  to  wait  until  the  cart 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


63 


was  filled  by  humble  country  people.  At  last  they  set 
out  on  their  leisurely  journey.  After  a  mile  or  two,  the 
Swedish  missionary  pulled  out  from  some  mysterious 
receptacle  of  his  Chinese  gown — it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  say  that  both  travellers  wore  Chinese  dress — a  copy 
of  the  Gospel  according  to  St  John.  This  he  began 
to  read  in  the  usual  high-pitched  sing-song  falsetto  in 
which  any  Chinese  gentleman  would  read  his  beloved 
classics.  No  notice  was  taken  of  the  reading  by  the 
passengers,  who  were  used  to  hearing  the  village  teacher 
or  the  retired  country  gentleman  amusing  himself  in 
his  leisure  hours  by  thus  refreshing  his  literary  memory. 
The  reader  went  steadily  through  the  first  two  chapters 
of  St  John.  But  when  he  had  read  in  the  opening 
verse  of  the  third  chapter  that  “  There  was  a  man  of 
the  Pharisees,  named  Nicodemus,  a  ruler  of  the  Jews,” 
he  dropped  the  sing-song  falsetto  of  the  reader  for  a 
moment,  and  with  his  ordinary  conversational  voice 
informed  the  open  heavens  and  any  open  ear  which 
might  be  near,  that  Nicodemus  was  a  very  nice  old 
gentleman,  thoroughly  respectable,  and  a  good  scholar 
too.  Without  waiting  to  know  how  such  a  comment 
might  affect  the  other  travellers  in  the  tightly  packed 
cart,  he  proceeded  in  the  reader’s  sing-song  with  verses 
two  and  three,  after  which  came  another  conversational 
comment.  So  it  went  on  until  the  sixteenth  verse  of 
the  third  chapter  was  reached.  By  this  time  the  whole 
cart-load  of  passengers  were  good-naturedly  attending, 
and  for  the  next  half-hour  the  reader,  who  had  in  some 
mysterious  way  changed  himself  into  a  preacher,  had  an 
interested  audience  who  listened  to  a  homely,  delight¬ 
ful,  vivid  and  penetrating  discourse  upon  Christian 
redemption. 


64 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


And  when  such  workers  arrive  at  their  destination, 
what  is  the  work  which  confronts  them  ? 
forecrCowdSs  Frequently  it  means  that  the  town  visited 
is  in  the  throes  of  excitement  caused  by  a 
local  fair.  There  is  much  noise  and  colour,  a  maximum 
of  discomfort,  and  a  great  waste  of  effort  in  moving  to 
and  fro.  There  is  sure  to  be  a  theatre  set  out  on  some 
open  space  and  surrounded  by  huge  crowds.  Somewhere 
near  to  such  a  crowd  the  Christians  of  the  district  set 
up  their  little  booth,  and  proceed  to  preach  and  sell 
copies  of  the  Gospels,  and  to  distribute  tracts.  They 
have  to  be  prepared  to  preach  to  a  shifting  audience ; 
and  sometimes  one  has  to  admit  that  the  main  benefit 
of  the  effort  accrues  to  the  Christians  themselves ;  they 
have  fought  down  the  natural  weakness  which  shrinks 
from  public  testimony.  One  interesting  recent  feature 
of  open-air  work  in  certain  provinces,  particularly  in 
Chihli  and  Shantung,  has  resulted  from  the  return  of 
the  men  employed  in  France  by  the  Chinese  Labour 
Corps.  Frequently  from  the  edge  of  the  crowd  gathered 
round  the  evangelist  disconcerting  comments  will  be 
made  apropos  of  illustrations  drawn  from  foreign  life. 
Before  the  war  it  was  a  common  fault  of  some  Chinese 
preachers  to  confuse  the  benefits  of  Christianity  with 
Western  materialistic  progress.  The  argument  roughly 
was  that,  if  a  country  became  Christian,  railways, 
steamers,  aeroplanes,  and  other  facilities  of  transport 
would  abound,  social  evils  would  cease,  idolatry  would 
disappear.  To-day,  if  one  speaks  about  idolatry,  one 
is  likely  to  be  taken  up  sharply  by  some  returned  coolie, 
who  informs  the  crowd  that  he  saw  more  idols  in  the 
temples  in  France  than  he  ever  saw  in  China,  which 
is  his  genial  way  of  referring  to  the  plentiful  statuary 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


65 


which  he  has  seen  in  the  churches  of  Rouen  or  other 
cities.  As  for  social  evils,  he  goes  into  details  of  what 
he  experienced  at  Dunkirk,  Calais  and  other  places  with 
appalling  frankness,  while  his  appreciation  of  the 
material  progress  of  the  West  is  coloured  by  vivid 
recollections  of  bombs  dropped  around  his  camp  in 
France,  the  unpleasantness  of  a  sea  passage,  and  so  on. 

Though  the  tabulated  results  of  open-air  preaching  may 
seem  meagre,  it  has  real  benefits,  one  being  the  increased 
respect  which  Christianity  gains  from  the  Chinese  public 
through  the  moral  and  intellectual  courage  shown  by 
its  adherents  in  thus  coming  out  into  the  open  to  pro¬ 
claim  their  faith.  The  continued  stream  of  testimony 
to  the  benefit  of  such  preaching  given  by  the  Chinese 
themselves  makes  it  impossible  to  say  that  open-air 
preaching  of  this  type  is  useless,  and  missionary  workers 
can  quote  many  instances  in  its  support.  They  tell 
of  country  people  who  listened  to  such  preaching,  and 
incidentally  purchased  Gospels,  who,  on  returning  to 
their  villages,  read  and  discussed  the  Good  News,  and 
reappeared  at  the  next  market  day  to  plead  that  further 
details  might  be  given  them,  or  that  preachers  might 
be  sent  to  their  villages. 

But  when  the  evangelists  have  finished  preaching 
to  the  crowds,  their  work  in  the  town  is  not 
Friendi^Home  completed.  One  thinks  of  a  certain  occa¬ 
sion  when  the  two  men  referred  to  above, 
after  having  preached  to  the  crowds  near  a  theatrical 
performance,  adjourned  to  the  home  of  a  Christian 
friend  close  by.  Whilst  there  they  sat  upon  the  hang 
so  beloved  by  the  northern  Chinese  (a  brick  bed  warmed 
by  a  dung  or  straw  or  coal  fire  kindled  beneath  it,  with 
a  winding  chimney  to  take  off  the  smoke).  Seated 

E 


66 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


there,  with  his  legs  crossed  like  a  Turk,  one  missionary 
brought  out  a  concertina,  upon  which  he  proceeded  to 
play  various  airs,  which  drew  neighbours  into  the  house 
till  the  place  was  packed,  after  which  the  two  began 
to  sing,  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  concertina,  the 
hymn,  “  We  are  marching  onward,  singing  as  we  go.” 
After  this  musical  interlude,  the  concertina  player  pro¬ 
ceeded  to  explain  the  words  of  the  hymn  which  they 
had  just  sung,  and  using  these  as  his  text,  went  on  to 
speak  simply  of  the  fundamental  truths  of  Christianity, 
using  a  wealth  of  illustration  drawn  from  the  daily  life 
of  the  people  present. 

A  different  type  of  work  called  out  by  unusual  con¬ 
ditions  is  that  presented  by  the  evangel- 
Mongoliaf  m  istic  problem  in  Mongolia.  One  of  the 
outstanding  figures  north  of  the  Great  Wall 
of  China  is  that  of  a  Swedish  representative  of  the 
British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  Mr  Larsen,  who  for 
nearly  forty  years  has  been  working  among  the  Mongols 
under  extraordinary  difficulties.  These  are  largely  owing 
to  the  nomadic  habits  of  the  people,  who  almost  live 
in  the  saddle  in  order  to  follow  their  herds  of  ponies 
and  cattle  to  such  parts  of  the  country  as  may  offer 
good  pasturage.  Merely  to  go  among  such  people  as  a 
preacher,  book  in  hand,  with  no  interest  or  activity  akin 
to  their  own,  would  have  been  to  court  failure.  It  was 
necessary  in  some  way  for  the  Bible  Agent  to  establish 
points  of  contact.  One  great  industry  of  the  Mongols, 
which  is  also  to  them  an  unfailing  joy,  is  horse-raising 
and  horse-dealing.  Mr  Larsen  therefore  took  up  the 
work  of  rearing  and  trading  horses,  in  addition  to  his 
activities  as  Bible  Society  Agent.  He  thus  got  an 
entry  into  the  social  orbit  of  the  Mongols,  established 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


67 


connections  along  the  lines  of  which  his  Bible  sales  ran 
smoothly,  and  built  up  friendships  with  this  difficult 
people,  to  go  amongst  whom  is  often,  for  the  stranger 
ignorant  of  their  habits,  a  very  grave  danger.1  The 
friendship  thus  built  up  by  Mr  Larsen  through  years 
of  work  in  a  common  interest  has  stood  the  strain  of 
the  turmoil,  unrest  and  bloodshed  of  the  twelve  years 
following  on  the  Revolution.  His  enthusiasm  as  a 
witness  to  the  Gospel  in  the  difficult  land  of  the  Mongols 
continues  to  this  day.  There  are  times  when  this 
romantic  figure  flits  quietly  into  Peking  on  business 
errands  ;  simple,  unassuming,  immensely  capable  ;  and 
when  he  appears  he  brings  a  breath  of  stimulating  air 
from  the  wider  spaces  to  us  dwellers  in  cities,  reminding 
us  by  his  presence  of  the  power  of  the  Lord  to  further 
the  work  of  His  Gospel  in  even  the  strangest  surroundings. 
Meeting  him  we  lift  up  our  hearts  and  take  courage. 

Such  are  some  of  the  methods  used  by  evangelists  who 
prepare  the  field  for  more  intensive  sowing.  To-day, 
while  in  certain  remote  districts  these  methods  have  still 
to  be  used,  the  time  has  arrived  when  it  is  necessary 
to  devise  fresh  means  so  that  the  results  of  such  work 
can  be  utilized  quickly  and  fully.  Not  only  is  the 
general  public  more  accessible  to  the  Christian  evangelist  ; 
the  workers,  or  should-be  workers,  now  number  so  many 
that  other  and  more  systematic  methods  have  to  be 
employed. 

For  example,  Mr  Grant,  who  was  killed  in  Mongolia  in  1918,  was 
warned  beforehand  that  no  one  should  go  near  a  Mongol  military  camp 
with  a  camera.  In  his  previous  experience  in  China  he  had  met  with 
so  many  wild  rumours  that  he  thought  he  could  afford  to  ignore  this 
one  also,  which  meant  the  loss  of  a  fine  character,  and  of  a  life  valuable 
for  research. 


68 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Instead  of  the  seemingly  haphazard  preaching  of  one 

Mobile  or  two  PeoPle  such  fimes  as  might  be 

Preaching  and  managed,  there  is  to-day  a  system  of 
Teaching  Bands  bands  of  workers  moving  about  in 


a  large  district  on  a  carefully-thought-out  plan,  staying 
months  1  in  one  centre  and  then  moving  on  to  another, 
so  that  within  a  definite  time  the  whole  of  the  district 
— probably  an  area  larger  than  that  of  Wales — has 
had  in  all  its  county  towns  or  large  village  groups,  the 
services  of  a  band  of  some  twelve  trained  workers. 

One  special  feature  of  this  work  is  the  arrangement 
by  which  pastors  and  evangelists  are  drawn  from  their 
particular  location  for  a  few  months  at  a  time  for 
inclusion  in  such  an  evangelistic  band.  Working  in  this 
way  with  a  large  group  of  men  of  similar  aims  and 
training,  they  get  the  opportunity  of  hearing  other 
speakers  and  the  inspiration  of  large  meetings,  whilst  their 
own  addresses  and  illustrations  are  new  to  their  hearers. 
For  them  it  is  in  every  way  a  benefit.  But  what  about 
the  orphaned  district  from  which  they  are  thus  with¬ 
drawn  ?  On  this  point  an  act  of  faith  was  necessary 
when  instituting  the  new  scheme,  and  the  result  has 
shown  that  such  faith  was  not  vain.  The  people  in  the 
local  church,  when  they  had  had  the  scheme  carefully  ex¬ 
plained  to  them,  rose  to  the  occasion.  They  made  special 
efforts  to  carry  on  the  work  themselves  as  their  contribu¬ 
tion  to  the  common  good.  New  speakers  were  discovered, 
and  powers  previously  unsuspected  were  called  forth. 


1  In  one  field  a  twelve  months’  period  is  aimed  at,  and  includes  a 
temporary  hospital,  night  classes,  and  even  primary  schools  for  boys  or 
girls  as  circumstances  may  suggest.  This  varied  attack  aims  at  reach¬ 
ing  different  classes  of  people.  After  twelve  months  the  forces  are 
moved  elsewhere.  If  no  response,  or  very  little  response,  has  been 
met  with,  “  follow-up  ”  work  is  not  attempted. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


69 


The  workers  in  these  mobile  bands  are  given  a  schedule 
on  which  to  plan  their  campaign  and  they  are  taught 
special  methods  of  approach.  Beginning  at  very  simple 
Christian  statements,  they  go  on  during  their  stay  to 
the  deeper  things  of  the  Christian  Gospel,  the  application 
of  that  Gospel  to  our  complicated  modern  life,  and 
the  claims  which  the  Christian  faith  makes  upon  its 
adherents.  Among  such  a  group  not  all  may  be  preachers. 
Probably  one  will  be  strong  on  music,  making  the  song 
service  attractive,  and  also  finding  out  among  the 
audience  some  who  can  be  taught  such  music  as  will 
enable  the  people  interested  to  continue  this  side  of  the 
Christian  education  when  the  band  has  left  the  district. 
Another  will  have  had  training  in  Sunday-school  work, 
and  can  organize  a  school  in  the  district.  Probably, 
if  such  a  band  is  successful,  at  least  one  or  two  women 
workers  will  afterwards  be  appointed  to  the  district 
to  follow  up  the  work  among  the  women.  In  some 
cases,  as  in  the  celebrated  missionary  work  done  by 
the  Chinese  in  Yunnan  among  the  aboriginal  tribes, 
the  band  has  consisted  of  married  Chinese  couples, 
the  women  being,  like  their  husbands,  highly  trained 
Christian  workers.  Such  a  combination  is  ideal,  since 
the  work  from  its  commencement  develops  as  quickly 
among  the  women  and  children  as  it  does  among  the 
men.  Sometimes  a  smaller  band,  called  a  “  follow-up  ” 
band,  goes  round  the  district  after  an  interval,  con¬ 
firming  the  faith  of  new  members  and  enquirers. 

From  these  methods  more  real  and  lasting  results 
are  accruing  than  from  the  old  one  of  placing  an 
evangelist  in  a  town  and  leaving  him  there  for  a 
couple  of  years.  No  wonder  that  he  grows  stale,  cut 
off  from  Christian  fellowship  for  so  long  a  period,  and 


70 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


knowing  that  whole  departments  of  his  work  which 
should  be  developed  are  being  left  untouched.  The  new 
method,  possible  only  to-day  because  of  the  increased 
number  of  workers,  avoids  such  pitfalls. 

Think  of  the  revolution  that  the  advent  of  such  a 
band  makes  in  the  lives  of  hundreds  of  people  in  a 
humdrum  Chinese  district.  In  a  vague  way  they  have 
heard  of  the  foreign  teaching ;  the  name  of  Jesus  is 
known  as  that  of  the  founder  of  a  sect  flourishing  among 
Westerners ;  its  significance  is  as  much  political  as 
religious,  and  the  flavour  of  it  is  foreign  and  unpleasant ; 
of  personal  significance  it  has  none.  And  then  there 
arrives  this  band  of  kindly,  intelligent  teachers  who 
live  for  months  in  their  midst,  understanding  the  diffi¬ 
culties  of  their  daily  life,  economic,  mental,  and  spiritual ; 
and  bringing  to  those  difficulties  teaching  which  has 
comfort  and  real  enlightenment.  The  word  “  Jesus  ”  is 
no  longer  a  foreign  label ;  it  is  the  name  of  a  radiant 
personality,  a  Teacher  who  addresses  Himself  to  the 
normal  conditions  of  human  life  ;  in  short,  Jesus  is  a 
Friend.  And  so  they  begin  to  make  their  slow  way 
towards  an  understanding  of  the  God  and  Father  of  us 
all,  as  revealed  through  His  Son.  If  this  be  so  with  the 
men  of  the  district,  how  much  more  so  is  it  the  case  with 
the  women,  for  whom  life  had  so  few  open  avenues  in  the 
old  days.  Instead  of  being  debarred  from  any  personal 
religious  exercises,  acting  only  as  drudges  to  minister  to 
the  material  necessities  of  the  men  who  are  the  ceremonial 
priests  of  the  family,  these  women  now  have  direct 
access  to  the  God  and  Father  of  us  all.  Amazing  truth  ; 
religion  is  meant  for  them  as  much  as  for  their  menfolk  ! 
God  wants  them.  Years  ago,  on  a  summer  evening, 
the  writer  sat  in  a  Chinese  courtyard  and  heard,  across 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


71 


some  intervening  compounds,  the  singing  of  a  group 
of  women  in  a  Chinese  Christian  family.  The  lives  of 
these  women,  like  those  of  their  non-Christian  neighbours, 
were  full  of  hard  and  largely  uninteresting  work,  but 
for  them  there  was  an  escape  into  a  joyous  large  place, 
the  place  where  God  meets  with  His  children.  The 
whole  difference  was  made  by  their  Christian  faith. 
At  the  close  of  the  day  joy  claimed  them.  The  grey 
life  of  Chinese  womanhood  was  charged  with  the  light 
of  Christian  happiness.  Never  before  had  the  writer 
so  realized  the  difference  which  Christianity  makes  to 
women  in  the  Orient. 

The  methods  employed  in  dealing  with  enquirers 
necessarily  vary  somewhat  among  the  missions  at  work 
in  China.  The  following  account  is  a  transcript  from 
the  author’s  own  experience.  When  a  man  shows 
interest  enough  to  attend  several  meetings,  he  is  asked 
if  he  wishes  to  become  “  an  enquirer.”  If  he  assents, 
his  name  is  placed  on  the  Church  Roll  as  such.  He 
is  then  expected  to  learn  by  heart  certain  portions  of 
Scripture,  which  are  given  as  answers  to  a  few  questions 
on  the  great  divisions  of  Christian  teaching.  The  candi¬ 
date  must,  in  addition  to  committing  these  Scriptures  to 
memory — which  is  all  in  line  with  his  Chinese  traditions 
— be  able  to  discuss  them  intelligently.  After  six  months 
of  this  work,  should  he  satisfy  the  Church  leaders,  he 
makes  a  public  declaration  of  faith,  and  is  registered  as 
one  who  has  “  taken  the  Covenant.” 

Then  follows  another  and  more  advanced  course  of 
Scriptural  instruction,  though  the  method  used  is  much 
the  same  as  that  adopted  for  the  first  period.  The 
“  Covenanter  ”  has  also  to  learn  certain  hymns  so  that, 
should  he  join  the  Church,  he  may  be  from  the  beginning 


72 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


of  his  membership  one  who  is  able  to  take  his  part  in 
public  worship.  At  the  end  of  this  second  period,  if 
he  again  satisfies  the  Church  leaders,  he  is  baptized  and 
becomes  a  full  member  of  the  Church. 

Another  method  of  work  is  what  we  might  call 

Systematic  “  illustrated  preaching.' ; '  For  many  years 
Work  with  past  the  magic-lantern  has  been  used  as 

the  Lantern  an  a^  £0  evangeiism>  a nd  generally,  in 

spite  of  the  difficulty  of  operating,  the  result  has  been 
good.  But  the  main  drawback  has  been  the  haphazard 
way  in  which  this  work  was  attempted.  To-day  lantern 
work  is  budgeted  for  in  a  systematic  way  by  a  missionary 
council,  and  time  and  training  are  given  to  the  workers 
in  this  special  branch  of  evangelism.  In  one  province 
it  has  for  years  been  the  practice  to  go  systematically 
through  the  villages  giving  illustrated  lectures  on  the 
life  of  Christ  or  the  extension  of  the  Early  Church. 
When  there  is  good  advertising  of  the  coming  group  of 
lectures,  this  work  has  proved  extremely  valuable. 

Another  most  interesting  development  is  the  evangel¬ 
istic  use  now  being  made  of  the  phonetic 
|^reip^honetlc  script.  This  is  a  system  of  thirty-nine 
simple  signs  which  represent  the  initial 
and  final  sounds  in  a  word  (Chinese  words  are  roughly 
speaking  monosyllabic),  and  is  easy  to  learn  when  com¬ 
pared  with  the  memorizing  of  the  two  thousand  eight 
hundred  characters,  many  of  them  intricate,  which  are 
necessary  for  reading  the  New  Testament  in  Chinese. 
The  New  Testament  has  been  printed  in  this  script, 
and  in  addition  there  is  a  hymnal,  besides  many 
pamphlets,  tracts  and  easy  stories.  The  Christian 
workers  in  all  districts  are  to-day  finding  it  a  valuable 
adjunct  to  evangelism.  We  confine  ourselves  here  to 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


73 


one  particular  effort  showing  how  the  system  works 
in  a  limited  area.  Circulars  were  sent  out  to  the 
authorities  of  villages  within  a  few  miles  radius  offering 
to  teach  the  script 1  to  men  and  women  selected  by  them. 
The  villages  responded  enthusiastically.  Their  nominees 
received  free  tuition  at  the  mission  station,  though  the 
missionaries  undertook  no  responsibility  for  pupils’  food 
and  bedding.  When  the  pupil  had  not  only  learnt  the 
system  but  could  freely  use  it,  he  was  shown  how  to 
teach  it  to  others.  He  then  returned  to  his  village  and 
became  its  “  script  professor.”  In  the  twenty-four 
villages  previously  untouched  by  Christian  evangelism 
which  were  thus  approached,  there  are  to-day  four 
hundred  people  using  the  script,  and  from  these  four 
hundred  there  are  eighteen  registered  Christian  enquirers. 

After  some  years  of  systematic  work  of  this  nature, 
let  us  look  at  some  of  the  massed  attacks 
Mass  Meetings  made  by  Christian  evangelism  in  China. 

Imagine  a  great  tent,  built  of  poles  and 
matting,  in  some  open  yard,  with  rough  matting 
covering  the  earth  floor,  and  hundreds  of  benches 
for  the  audience.  At  one  end  there  is  erected  a  large 
platform  with  seating  for  a  considerable  choir  in 
addition  to  the  numerous  speakers.  Here,  day  after  day, 
meetings  are  held,  where  perhaps  seventy  per  cent  of 
the  audience  are  practically  strange  to  Christianity.  They 
come  with  little  criticism  and  less  antagonism.  Prob¬ 
ably  they  have  much  more  curiosity  than  sympathy, 
but  their  being  there  at  all  means  that  Christianity 
has  got  its  chance,  a  chance  that  thirty  years 
ago  would  have  seemed  almost  incredible  to  Christian 

1  In  this  particular  case  the  script  used  was  similar  in  principle  to 
the  one  described  above,  but  differed  in  detail. 


74 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


pioneers  in  China.  The  speakers,  singers  and  organizers 
will  be  almost  entirely  Chinese.  The  foreigners  present 
are  there  to  be  used  if  necessary,  to  give  advice  when 
asked,  to  show  their  oneness  with  the  work ;  but 
the  burden  of  that  work,  and  particularly  the  public 
recognition  of  leadership,  falls  upon  the  Chinese  workers. 

In  the  matter  of  understanding  the  Chinese  mind  and 
addressing  the  Christian  message  to  it,  the  Chinese 
evangelist  undoubtedly  has  the  advantage.  For  example, 
the  average  Chinese  hearer  is  not  troubled  much  about 
the  difficulty  of  miracle,  whereas  teaching  which  seems 
to  attack  the  duty  of  filial  piety  is  a  real  difficulty.  The 
foreign  evangelist  will  take  pains  to  help  his  hearers 
to  grapple  with  the  difficulties  he  anticipates  they  will 
have  with  such  subjects  as  the  miraculous  feeding  of 
the  multitude  ;  he  will  give  little  attention  to  such  a 
saying  as  “  Woman,  what  have  I  to  do  with  thee  ? 
Mine  hour  is  not  yet  come/'  The  Chinese  evangelist, 
on  the  other  hand,  will  simply  announce  the  first  miracle 
as  historical  fact  and  leave  it  there,  but  he  will  spend 
time  and  patience  in  the  second  instance  to  show  that 
Jesus  was  a  loving  and  dutiful  son. 

One  feature  of  such  meetings  is  the  place  found  for 
public  confession.  There  is  full  preaching  of  the  Gospel, 
there  is  much  song,  there  is  much  prayer ;  but  it  has 
seemed  as  if  there  were  some  psychological  and  spiritual 
imperative  compelling  hearers  who  have  been  convinced 
by  the  Truth,  then  and  there  to  make  confession  of 
past  sins  before  yielding  to  their  desire  to  re-start  life 
in  the  companionship  of  Jesus  Christ. 

When  one  has  witnessed  meetings  of  this  nature — 
where  spiritual  power  is  so  manifest,  where  Chinese 
saints  and  seers  are  so  clearly  owned  of  God  in  their 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


75 


propagation  of  the  Faith — one  realizes  that  in  China 
Christianity  has  passed  the  experimental  stage  ;  it  must 
be  reckoned  in  future  as  one  of  the  integral  features 
of  the  national  life.  Dr  John  R.  Mott,  addressing 
large  meetings  in  Peking  in  1922 — at  one  of  which  his 
Chairman  was  the  Acting-Premier  Dr  W.  W.  Yen, 
himself  a  convinced  Christian — spoke  of  the  difference 
between  Christian  work  in  China  to-day  as  compared 
with  that  done  during  his  early  visits.  Then  the 
foreigner  had  to  be  in  the  forefront,  preaching,  organ¬ 
izing,  laying  foundations  ;  to-day  this  place  is  taken 
by  his  Chinese  friends,  the  foreigner  standing  on  one 
side,  and  filling  in  such  space  as  his  Chinese  colleague 
may  allot  him.  In  other  words,  the  Chinese  Church 
has  arrived. 

It  may  be  asked,  “  Why  then,  this  being  the  case,  do 
we  still  have  the  continued  application  for  support  from 
the  home  base  ?  ”  The  answer  is  that  for  some  years 
yet  the  inspiration  and  comfort  and  advice  of  the  foreign 
Christian  teacher  will  be  necessary  for  the  help  of  the 
Chinese  worker.  The  fact  that  the  Gospel  has  found 
its  footing  in  China  is  no  excuse  for  our  retarding  its 
rate  of  progress  by  withdrawing  our  support.  It  will 
progress  with  us  or  without  us,  but  it  will  certainly 
progress  more  quickly  with  us  if  we  have  grace  to  do 
the  kind  of  work  necessary  and  seek  the  minimum  of 
recognition.  If  we  pray,  “  Thy  Kingdom  come,”  and 
add  the  words,  “  Even  so,  come  quickly,  Lord  Jesus  !  ” 
then  it  is  for  our  missionaries  to  remain  in  China,  and 
even  to  add  to  their  present  numbers. 

We  come  next  to  a  particular  form  of  evangelism 
due  to  the  amazing  changes  in  modern  China,  namely, 
evangelism  in  the  Army.  Years  ago  when  Feng  Yii- 


76 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


hsiang,  the  Christian  General,  was  a  simple  Colonel 
in  Shensi,  he  asked  the  writer  (who  at 
th*a^rmym  m  time  was  organizing  the  first  Y.M.C.A. 

work  in  Sianfu),  what  the  Association 
meant  to  do  for  the  soldiers.  “  Do  you  mean  to  teach 
football,  and  billiards,  and  a  little  English  ?  If  so, 
you’ll  get  no  help  from  me.  But  if  you’ll  have  Bible 
classes  and  Gospel  services  I’ll  help  you  all  I  can.” 
That  was  in  1913,  and  General  Feng  has  ever  since  been 
seeking  more  and  more  evangelists  for  the  needs  of  his 
now  famous  nth  Division.  To-day  at  Nan  Yuan,  seven 
miles  south  of  Peking,  out  of  his  thirty  thousand  troops 
six  thousand  are  Christians.  There  are  four  ordained 
ministers  of  the  Gospel  and  one  Y.M.C.A.  secretary 
living  with  the  troops,  while  special  work  is  carried 
on  for  officers’  wives  who  five  near.  From  Peking  there 
go  out  daily  Chinese  and  foreign  evangelists  to  preach 
and  teach  in  the  camp,  and  the  Bible  Society  has 
opened  a  depot  there. 

With  all  his  enthusiasm,  General  Feng  has  a  remark¬ 
able  fund  of  practical  common  sense.  One  evening  he 
addressed  a  meeting  of  the  Peking  Missionary  Association. 
He  spoke  for  thirty  minutes,  his  plea  being  the  need 
of  China  for  more  Christian  aid.  One  point  he  made 
was  that  mission  schools  should  be  kept  as  simple  as 
possible,  so  that  children  of  poor  Chinese  parents  sent 
to  mission  boarding  schools  might  live  in  simple  sur¬ 
roundings  that  would  not  spoil  them  for  returning  to 
the  humble  village  homes  from  which  they  came. 

Two  days  before  Christmas  1922  the  writer  met  a 
group  of  Feng’s  men  swinging  through  the  South-west 
gate  of  Peking’s  Tartar  city  on  a  route  march.  Along 
the  great  West  Street  their  song  rolled  :  the  Chinese 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


77 


version  of  the  song  we  know  so  well — “  Onward  Christian 
Soldiers.”  Hearing  it,  one  realized  that  here  were 
Christian  soldiers  indeed :  men  of  discipline,  men  of 
moral  courage.  Their  time  is  fully  occupied  with 
military  duties,  with  industrial  work  of  various  de¬ 
scriptions — as  an  example  take  the  excellent  wicker 
chairs  and  carpets  made  by  them,  which  are  on  the 
Peking  market,  with  classes  for  reading,  writing,  and 
arithmetic,  with  Bible  classes,  prayer  meetings,  and 
preaching  services.  Such  an  army  is  an  amazing 
challenge  to  Christian  missions  to  send  out  all  available 
workers  to  help  those  who  thus  help  themselves. 

Evangelism  amongst  the  Reading  Classes 

We  come  now  to  the  evangelistic  work  being  done 
in  the  cities  among  people  whose  education  varies  from 
reading  with  some  difficulty  in  the  daily  newspaper 
to  graduation  in  the  Universities.  This  brings  us  to  a 
question  which  has  become  acute  of  late  ;  the  transfer  of 
forward  evangelistic  work  from  the  country  to  the  city. 
Until  recent  years  the  response  to  the  Christian  message 
has  mostly  been  in  the  country  districts,  where  opposition 
to  the  missionaries  as  foreigners  has  never  been  so 
violent  as  in  the  cities ;  whereas  the  literate  and  the 
official  class  who  flocked  to  the  cities  distrusted  and 
despised  foreign  innovations.  To-day,  however,  wherever 
the  new  industrialism  reaches,  all  this  is  being  changed. 
In  many  areas  the  man  who  formerly  worked  in  the 
field  now  works  in  the  factory.  But  his  transfer  to  the 
city  does  not  affect  his  mental  attitude  to  religion  to 
the  extent  of  making  him  oppose  any  one  form  of  religion 
because  its  original  evangelists  were  foreigners.  It  is 


78 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


true  that  he  is  not  so  open  to  religious  instruction  as 
when  he  was  in  his  country  home,  but  that  is  because 
his  mind  is  more  taken  up  with  the  many  pleasures, 
the  multitudinous  interests,  and  the  growing  class  con¬ 
sciousness  of  workers  plunged  into  the  fearful  joys  and 
pains  of  an  organized  labour  union.  But  for  the 
rest,  he  is  tolerant  enough  of  the  Christian  evangelist. 
His  advent  in  the  large  numbers  that  we  see  to-day  is 
changing  the  attitude  of  the  cities  to  Christian  teaching. 
Instead  of  the  old  blank  wall  of  indifference,  or  the 
bristling  barrier  of  antagonism,  we  now  have  an  open 
avenue  of  approach. 

But  this  very  opportunity  means  that  a  new  and 
heavy  burden  is  laid  upon  the  Chinese  Church  and 
Christian  missions.  Since  for  decades  the  aggressive 
Christian  work  has  been  in  the  country,  it  follows  that 
buildings  and  organizations  are  there  also,  and  the 
tradition  has  been  established  that  it  is  the  country 
churches  which  need  shepherding,  the  country  districts 
which  need  evangelizing.  Thus  the  Church  is  caught 
unprepared  for  the  new  change.  When  it  is  proposed 
to  establish  effective  well-manned  preaching  centres  in 
the  cities,  there  is  an  outcry  from  the  Chinese  Church 
that  the  country  churches  are  being  neglected,  and  from 
the  home  mission  boards  in  America  and  Britain  there 
comes  the  query  :  “  Why,  considering  that  the  Chinese 
Church  is  now  so  established,  cannot  that  Church  itself 
undertake  to  meet  the  new  situation  and  discharge  its 
responsibilities  ?  ”  The  protest  is  really  the  answer  to 
the  query ;  that  is,  the  Chinese  churches  in  the  country 
districts  cannot  be  expected  suddenly  to  grasp  the  value 
of  the  new  opportunity  in  the  cities  and  the  importance 
of  immediately  seizing  it,  in  the  same  way  that  the  old- 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


79 


established  churches  in  Britain  or  America  with  their 
long  experience  would  do.  It  is  as  the  representatives 
of  these  old-established  home  churches  that  the  missions 
are  faced  with  the  task  of  giving  the  Chinese  Church, 
by  means  of  a  few  well-appointed  city  preaching  centres, 
the  object  lesson  which  the  Church  needs.  Once  the 
Chinese  Church  sees  the  results  of  the  new  methods  she 
will,  even  at  a  cost  of  sacrifice,  put  strength,  money, 
and  the  services  of  her  very  best  evangelists  and 
organizers  into  the  winning  of  the  cities. 

From  the  many  highly  developed  systems  of  evangel¬ 
istic  work  in  the  cities  to  be  found  in 
Evangelism17  China  to-day,  we  here  instance  two  :  the 
one  used  in  Szechwan  in  the  far  West, 
the  other  in  Shantung  in  the  North-east. 

Travelling  in  Szechwan  for  ten  days  from  the  great 
port  of  Chung-king  to  the  provincial  capital  Chengtu, 
the  traveller  passes  through  eight  walled  cities,  in  each 
of  which  Christian  work  is  undertaken  by  members  of  an 
American  mission.  This  mission  has  in  the  Szechwan 
province  adopted  a  highly  centralized  system.  It  has 
persistently  put  its  strength  into  educational  and  training 
work  in  Chung-king  and  Chengtu,  with  the  result  that 
to-day  it  is  able  to  provide  ordained  Chinese  ministers  who 
can  take  complete  charge  of  highly  organized  work.  More¬ 
over,  having  trained  a  man  for  the  work,  the  mission 
does  not  hesitate  to  trust  him  with  it  entirely,  and 
to  lay  a  very  heavy  burden  of  initiative  and  responsi¬ 
bility  upon  him.  The  programme  adopted  generally 
throughout  the  whole  area  is  arrived  at  by  a  full 
conference  of  Chinese  and  foreign  workers.  Along  the 
general  lines  of  this  programme  each  centre  carries  on 
its  work,  but  a  large  margin  is  left  to  the  initiative  and 


80 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


discretion  of  the  individual  minister  to  develop  his  work 
on  lines  suitable  to  his  district.  It  is  interesting  in  this 
connection  to  watch  the  way  in  which  Chinese  ideas 
gradually  correct  the  well-intentioned  but  often  defective 
plans  of  the  foreign  missionary,  who  naturally  repro¬ 
duced,  in  large  measure,  those  methods  of  work  with 
which  he  was  familiar  in  his  own  country,  without 
realizing  their  unsuitability  to  the  Chinese  situation. 
One  instance  of  this  which  strikes  the  traveller  is  the 
change  from  the  shop  to  the  guest  room  method.  The 
former  made  use  of  an  open-fronted  street  shop,  where 
the  missionary  or  evangelist  stood  up  to  sing  or  to 
preach,  a  shop  filled  with  benches  upon  which  street 
loafers  might  sit,  making  it  difficult  for  the  fastidious 
Chinese  gentleman  who  might  also  wish  to  listen.  The 
latter  method  shows  a  blank  wall  broken  into  only  by 
a  doorway  over  which  is  placed  the  sign  “  Gospel  Hall.” 
Entering  the  doorway  one  finds  the  gate-keeper  in  his 
gatehouse  in  the  approved  Chinese  style.  By  him  the 
visitor  is  conducted  to  that  joy  of  the  Chinese  home, 
“  the  guest  room.”  Here  the  Chinese  evangelist  spreads 
himself.  It  is  here  that  he  puts  the  main  part  of  the 
allowance  granted  him  for  the  upkeep  of  his  work.  In 
the  offices  of  Chinese  officials  the  writer  has  seen  no 
more  attractive  guest  rooms  than  were  to  be  seen  at 
these  mission  centres.  It  was  not  that  the  outlay  was 
extravagant,  but  the  results  were  distinctly  pleasing ; 
and  the  room  was  such  that  one  could  ask  any 
Chinese  gentleman  into  it  without  any  hesitation.  This 
expenditure  is  justified  by  the  experience  gained  during 
years  of  evangelistic  effort.  Whereas  for  occasional 
work  the  large  hall  or  the  elaborate  chapel  has  its  uses, 
for  the  work  of  opening  the  minds  of  one’s  Chinese 


At  a  Chinese  Summer  School 

A  Christian  evangelist  talking  with  a  “ Kneeling  Pilgrim”  who  is 
making  his  twenty-second  annual  pilgrimage  to  the  Sacred  Mountain  in 
Hunan.  Note  the  kneeling  pads  on  his  knees  [he  prostrates  himself  every  ten 
yards')  and  the  stool  with  incense  sticks  that  he  is  carrying.  The  latter  are 
kept  hurtling  during  the  entire  journey. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


81 


neighbours  and  friends  to  a  fuller  appreciation  of  this 
Christian  religion  brought  into  their  midst,  what  is 
necessary  is  the  repeated,  easy  conversation  in  sur¬ 
roundings  as  pleasant  as  it  is  possible  for  the  mission 
to  provide.  This  is  the  work  that  a  trained  experienced 
Chinese  pastor  carries  on  in  his  guest  room.  Here  are 
arranged  the  various  activities  of  a  city  centre  :  Bible 
study  circles,  lectures  on  the  application  of  Christianity 
to  the  new  industrial  problems,  classes  for  educated 
women,  evening  classes  for  poor  children,  and  for  shop 
assistants  who  have  no  spare  time  during  the  day. 
Then  there  is  the  organizing  of  the  Church  members 
into  bands  for  touring  the  near  villages  or  for  house-to- 
house  visiting  work  in  the  city  itself.  One  delightful 
bit  of  work  is  that  of  teaching  learners  to  hold  family 
worship  in  their  own  homes.  As  the  learner’s  friends 
and  neighbours  soon  get  to  know  all  about  this  new 
departure  (what  is  spoken  in  the  ear  is  soon  proclaimed 
upon  the  housetops  in  China)  "  family  worship  ”  quickly 
develops  into  what  used  to  be  called  “  a  cottage  meeting  ” 
in  some  parts  of  Britain.  Such  homes  soon  become 
healthy  centres  of  spontaneous  evangelism. 

There  is  being  carried  on  to-day  in  Shantung  an  ex¬ 
periment  of  great  importance  in  the  work  of  Christian 
missions.  The  missionary  in  charge  is  particularly  well 
equipped  for  his  special  work  by  natural  gifts,  by  long 
experience  and  by  the  ungrudging,  far-seeing  policy  of 
his  mission.  In  one  of  the  main  streets  of  Tsinan  this 
mission  has  rented  premises  which  have  been  turned 
into  an  institutional  mission  centre.  Here  are  to  be 
found  reading  rooms  fronting  on  the  street,  where  any 
passers-by  can  look  over  the  daily  papers,  besides  weekly 
and  monthly  magazines.  In  other  rooms  classes  are 


82 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


held  at  frequent  intervals  ;  classes  kept  small  in  number 
so  that  contact  between  pupil  and  teacher  shall  be 
close.  There  are  classes  for  women,  for  neglected 
children,  for  neighbouring  shop  assistants,  for  Christians 
old  in  the  faith  who  are  seeking  from  the  material  here 
provided  to  enrich  the  testimonies  which  they  give 
in  the  homes  of  their  neighbours ;  classes  for  trained 
evangelists  and  church  leaders  which  shall  help  them  in 
their  work  of  the  coming  month  when  they  disperse 
afresh  over  the  wide  country  district ;  classes  of  all 
descriptions.  Here  the  missionary  has  an  office  to  which 
he  comes  at  nine  o’clock  as  any  business  man  might 
come ;  from  it  he  returns  at  midday  for  lunch,  and  is 
back  again  in  the  afternoon,  bringing  with  him  what  he 
may  need  for  his  evening  meal,  since  some  of  his  most 
strenuous  work  is  in  the  evening  hours  when  the  neigh¬ 
bouring  shops  and  mills  are  closed  and  their  workers 
have  leisure.  In  this  office,  when  not  working  up  his 
lectures  and  addresses,  seeing  to  accounts,  and  all  the 
hundred  and  one  multifarious  details  attendant  on  such 
an  enterprise,  he  is  accessible  for  interviews  with  all 
and  sundry.  In  addition,  visiting  bands  are  organized 
so  that  Chinese  and  foreign  workers,  some  of  a  ripe 
experience,  others  having  little  more  than  their 
enthusiasm  to  help  them,  can  go,  in  a  systematic  way, 
visiting  houses  through  all  quarters  of  the  district. 
The  effect  of  this  business-like  regular  procedure  is 
incalculable  ;  to  put  it  bluntly,  it  is  to  substitute  a  truly 
professional  method  for  that  of  the  scrambling  amateur. 
Yet,  lest  there  should  come  to  such  regularity  the  blight 
and  sterility  often  attendant  upon  the  effort  which  is 
merely  customary,  the  personnel  of  this  work  moves 
out  occasionally  to  some  temple  a  few  miles  away  from 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


88 


the  city’s  din  and  dust  where,  amid  the  woods  which 
face  the  slopes  of  the  T’ai  Shan  spur  of  hills,  in  the 
clean,  green  quietness,  there  is  healing  for  strained 
nerves,  there  is  refreshment  for  the  overworked  body. 
Here  the  tired  eyes  get  glimpses  of  the  King  in  His 
beauty,  and  of  the  Land  that  is  very  far  off.  In  the 
fellowship  of  this  retreat  the  worker  hears  his  Master 
say  to  him,  as  He  said  to  the  leash-straining  Peter  of  old  : 
“  Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  Peter ;  for  flesh  and  blood 
have  not  revealed  it  unto  thee,  but  my  Father  who  is 
in  heaven.” 


The 


To-day  is  the  crucial  time  for  Christianizing  the  new¬ 
born  Chinese  industrialism.  If  Christianity 
Opportunity  does  not  recognize  the  possibilities  of  the 
hour,  other  world  movements  do.  The 
communist,  with  the  glow  of  his  Soviet  success  in  his 
message,  is  finding  a  remarkable  response  from  the 
higher  grades  of  the  Chinese  proletariat.  On  this  point 
something  has  already  been  said  in  Chapter  III. 

Little  comes  from  the  business  interests  in  China 
which  might  offer  an  attractive  alternative  to  the  com¬ 
munist’s  propaganda.  From  such  sources  the  Chinese 
worker  gets  little  or  no  idealistic  outlook  on  life  ;  nothing 
but  the  old  dreary  outlook  of  supply  and  demand.  From 
the  ranks  of  Chinese  Government  students,  particularly 
those  directly  influenced  by  the  Renaissance  movement, 
come  those  who  sincerely  believe  that  all  religion  spells 
reaction.  Among  them  are  men  sincere,  self-sacrificing 
and  patriotic.  By  means  of  a  purely  non-supernatural 
programme  they  seek  to  save  their  country  from  its 
present  distresses,  and  from  the  social  evils  which  they 
fear  will  follow  the  development  of  Western  industrial- 


84 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


ism  in  China.  It  is  poor  policy  to  regard  such  men  as 
“  anti-Christian  ”  obstructionists ;  we  need  to  help  them, 
to  show  them  that  Christ’s  Gospel  is  a  Gospel.  We  need 
to  win  their  sympathy,  to  use  their  fine  qualities  for  the 
advancement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  the  land.  At 
present  among  these  men  there  are  few  who  have  been 
able  to  correct  their  academic  theorizing  by  any  personal 
experience  in  the  industrial  area.  A  few  here  or  there 
know  something  of  French  and  German  industrial  con¬ 
ditions,  of  the  mills  of  Lancashire,  or  the  iron  foundries 
of  Pittsburg.  But  these  men  have  often  specialized  too 
early  to  have  the  necessary  mental  training  which  would 
enable  them  to  grasp  clearly,  and  to  state  persuasively, 
the  social  and  economic  principles  which  underlie  the 
industrial  conditions  which  they  met  in  Europe ;  and 
even  if  they  were  all  able  to  do  so,  what  are  so  few  amid 
the  bewildering  numbers  now  pouring  into  China’s  new 
industrial  centres  ?  For  the  sweetening  of  the  Chinese 
worker’s  daily  fife,  for  saving  him  from  the  temptations 
which  sensualism  offers  him  as  an  escape  from  the  strain 
of  his  daily  labour ;  for  the  sane  outlook  on  life  which 
shall  make  him  a  worthy  citizen — there  is  nothing  in 
the  field  comparable  to  the  Christian  ethic  and  the 
dynamic  hope  which  is  in  Jesus  Christ.  To  Christ’s 
friends  there  has  been  committed  this  great  power ; 
power  which  is  able  to  turn  darkness  into  light  for  the 
millions  of  Chinese  men,  women  and  children  who  are 
suddenly  taken  from  the  accustomed  amenities  of  their 
patriarchal,  simple  fife,  and  thrust  into  the  bewilder¬ 
ments,  the  unyielding  harshness  of  some  ill-planned, 
joyless,  dehumanizing  industrial  quarter  in  or  about  some 
great  city.  This  is  not  a  challenge  which  we  dare  refuse. 
Having  the  Gospel  of  Hope,  which  is  sufficient  to  meet 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  EVANGELIST 


85 


the  need,  committed  unto  us,  woe  unto  us  if  we  preach 
not  the  Gospel. 

Travelling  through  the  terrible  grandeur  of  the  Witches’ 
Gorge  of  the  Upper  Yangtze  River,  the  traveller  by  the 
modern  steamer  is  for  a  whole  day  thrilled  and  awed  by 
the  majesty,  the  danger,  the  unceasing  wonder  which 
greet  him  at  every  turn  of  this  wonderful  river  as  it 
forces  its  way  through  seemingly  impenetrable  rocks 
on  its  journey  to  the  sea.  He  dare  not  close  his  eyes 
or  mind  to  the  wonders  about  him,  for  never  before  has 
he  seen  such  marvels,  nor  ever  may  again.  As  the 
sunset  is  dying  in  the  west,  staining  the  swelling  waters 
with  its  purple  gleam,  the  traveller  passes  through  a 
narrow  western  pass,  known  as  the  Wind-box  Gorge, 
to  find  the  little  town  of  Kwei-fu  on  his  right,  with 
its  brave  wall,  climbing  up  almost  from  the  bed  of  the 
river,  safeguarding  its  citizens  from  that  pest  of  China 
— the  brigand  band.  The  boat  turns  into  the  quiet 
waters  formed  by  the  entering  of  a  pleasing  Thames- 
like  stream  which  here  comes  to  join  the  parent  Yangtze. 
To  the  right  can  be  seen  a  beautiful  little  temple  crown¬ 
ing  the  low  spur  of  the  crags  which  the  boat  has  just 
passed.  The  pine  tree  branches  hold  captive  flickering 
rays  of  red  gold  which  the  sun  still  sends  forth.  All 
around  is  quietness,  safety  and  peace.  From  the 
town  and  its  many  sampans  (small  boats)  comes  the 
pleasingly  subdued  murmur  of  homely  people.  Large 
lazy  birds  are  wheeling  slowly  in  the  sky ;  the  anchor 
drops,  and  the  traveller  heaves  a  sigh  of  content ;  he 
is  at  rest.  The  way  to  this  haven  has  been  wonder¬ 
ful,  but  it  has  left  him  with  nerves  aquiver  from 
excess  of  emotional  appreciation,  so  that  the  sense  of 


86 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


peace  which  suddenly  falls  upon  him  is  inexpressibly 
welcome. 

So,  to-day,  the  evangelistic  worker  comes,  after  a 
long  and  heroic  journey,  to  a  place  of  peace.  He  has 
met  with  wonderful,  even  appalling,  experiences  as  he 
followed  Jehovah,  who  may  lead  His  people  through  the 
divided  waters  of  some  Red  Sea,  or  over  the  rolling 
miles  of  Arabian  deserts,  or  even  under  the  thunders 
of  some  awesome  Sinai,  but  who  will  bring  them  in  His 
good  time  to  the  still  waters  and  the  green  pastures 
of  the  Promised  Land.  So  the  seed-sower  of  Cathay 
to-day  sees  himself  entering  into  his  quiet  haven.  His 
work  will  be  no  less  devoted,  no  less  intense,  but  it  will 
have  over  it  the  peace  which  comes  to  him  who  has  won* 
his  way  through  the  terrors  of  the  untried  and  the 
unknown,  and  has  arrived  at  the  home  where  he  shall 
dwell. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


Evangelism  always  entails  education.  It  means  an 
increase  in  the  number  of  those  who  desire  detailed 
Christian  instruction,  and  this  involves  trained  Bible 
teachers  with  at  least  an  average  general  education  be¬ 
hind  them.  It  means  the  development  of  a  well-educated, 
well-trained  native  ministry,  to  take  over  the  charge 
of  the  new  churches  from  the  missionaries.  It  means, 
too,  the  preparation  of  an  able  body  of  teachers  to  man 
the  different  grades  of  mission  schools  and  colleges ; 
and  also  the  making  of  nurses  and  doctors  to  staff  the 
growing  mission  hospitals.  So  at  an  early  date  in  the 
history  of  Protestant  missions  in  China,  schools  became 
an  integral  part  of  the  work  of  the  missionaries. 

To  understand  the  development  of  Christian  edu- 
Ancient  cation  in  China,  it  is  necessary  to  refer 

Chinese  briefly  to  the  system  already  existing 

Education  when  the  missionaries  entered  the  country. 
At  the  very  dawn  of  Chinese  history,  before  2000  b.c., 
the  Chinese  not  only  had  very  definite  ideas  upon 
education,  but  appointed  a  Minister  of  Education  to  see 
that  those  ideas  were  carried  out.  The  ancient  system 
reached  its  height  about  1000  b.c.  There  were  schools 
of  various  grades.  The  subjects  taught  were  religious, 
moral,  and  practical :  the  religious  rites  upon  the  practice 
of  which  the  welfare  of  the  people  depended ;  the  social 

87 


88 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


relationships  which  were  fundamental  to  the  persistence 
of  the  social  order ;  and  the  practical  arts  that  were 
necessary  for  the  simple  material  needs  of  those  days. 

Then  followed  several  hundred  years  of  anarchy, 
during  which  the  whole  educational  system  broke  down. 
In  the  middle  of  the  period  of  confusion  the  great 
philosophers  arose,  chief  amongst  whom  were  Confucius 
and  his  disciples.  They  endeavoured  to  bring  order  out 
of  chaos  by  reviving  the  ancient  culture.  Accordingly 
they  collected  and  edited  the  ancient  writings  in  which 
that  culture  was  embodied.  So  that  when  the  Empire 
was  once  again  consolidated,  these  books  became  the 
standard  of  government  and  life  ;  and  the  study  of 
them  became  the  content  of  education.  From  hence¬ 
forth  Chinese  education  was  purely  literary ;  it  became 
theoretical  rather  than  practical.  Yet  even  so,  for  a 
long  time,  the  classical  writings  furnished  a  liberal 
education,  which  might  be  likened  to  that  afforded  by 
the  Roman  and  Greek  classics  in  the  West ;  and  which 
produced  patient,  thorough,  humble-minded  scholars. 
But  as  the  centuries  passed,  form  came  to  be  prized 
rather  than  matter,  and  though  there  were  noteworthy 
exceptions  continually  to  be  found,  education  became 
pedantic  and  altogether  remote  from  life. 

One  other  tendency  must  be  noted.  In  ancient  times 
it  was  recognized  that  the  State  was  responsible  for 
education,  and  State  schools  and  colleges  were  estab¬ 
lished,  the  best  students  from  the  colleges  passing  into 
Government  employment.  Later,  however,  this  order 
changed  and  during  the  Christian  era  education  was 
left  largely  to  private  enterprise.  Although  State  schools 
of  various  grades  still  existed,  the  Government  did  not 
look  to  them  for  the  supply  of  brilliant  men  for  Govern- 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


89 


ment  office  ;  but  to  the  public  competitive  examinations 
which  were  held  annually  and  triennially  according  to 
the  grade  of  the  “  degree  ”  for  which  the  examination 
was  taking  place.  Emphasis  being  thrown  upon  the 
examinations  only,  the  schools  declined,  and  such  schools 
as  continued  to  exist  were  mainly  of  a  private  nature. 
The  public  examinations,  by  means  of  which  Govern¬ 
ment  offices  were  filled,  were  open  to  all  candidates — 
poor  as  well  as  rich — though  for  the  most  part  the  children 
of  the  wealthy  alone  attended  school  and  aimed  at 
such  honours. 

Thus  when  Christian  missions  commenced  operations 
during  last  century,  education  in  China  was  not  in 
a  flourishing  condition.  The  examination  system  was 
functioning  as  a  means  of  selecting  the  best  talent  in 
China  for  imperial  service  ;  but  it  encouraged  excellence 
in  literary  form  rather  than  ability  in  practical  affairs, 
and  fostered  the  idea  of  education  as  a  means  to 
office  rather  than  for  the  development  of  the  human 
personality.  The  schools  were  for  the  most  part 
private  undertakings,  attended  by  but  a  handful  of  the 
children  of  the  wealthy.  The  great  mass  of  the  people 
reverenced  letters  more  than  any  other  people  in  the 
world,  but  themselves  remained  practically  ignorant  of 
them. 

About  the  middle  of  last  century  the  interior  of 

The  Beginnings  China  became  open  to  missionary  effort, 
of  Christian  Missionary  pioneers  penetrated  to  all  parts 
Education  0f  Empire,  and  wherever  they  settled 

they  began,  for  the  reasons  stated  in  the  opening 
paragraph  of  this  chapter,  to  open  schools.  In  these 
schools  the  elements  of  Western  knowledge  were  taught 
as  well  as  the  Chinese  literary  books.  The  missionaries 


90 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


contended  with  great  difficulties.  For  a  long  time  their 
schools  were  tabooed.  Who  were  these  barbarians  ? 
said  the  Chinese.  What  kind  of  learning  could  it  be 
that  was  not  contained  in  the  ancient  writings  ?  Never¬ 
theless  the  missionaries  persevered ;  without  equip¬ 
ment,  without  text-books,  often  without  scholars  !  The 
Chinese  Christians  however  rallied  round  them,  deciding 
that,  though  poor,  their  children  should  have  education, 
not  for  official  rank,  but  as  a  means  to  their  growth  in 
the  new  Truth  they  had  just  begun  to  learn.  So  the 
schools  grew  in  numbers  and  in  quality.  In  some  far 
village  an  earnest  Christian  would  lend  a  room,  mud- 
walled  and  straw-roofed,  on  his  tiny  farmstead,  to  serve 
as  church  on  Sunday  and  as  school-room  on  week-days. 
At  the  central  mission  stations  in  the  walled  cities 
secondary  schools  were  developed,  colleges  founded,  and 
even  plans  for  universities,  uniting  and  crowning  the 
educational  work  of  many  missions,  were  made. 

Meantime  great  changes  were  taking  place  in  China. 
Largely  owing  to  the  indignities  suffered  at  the  hands 
of  Western  nations,  the  Government  decided  to  learn 
the  foreigners’  secret.  Educational  Commissions  were 
despatched  to  the  West ;  picked  students  were  sent  to 
America  and  Europe  ;  and  eventually  China  decided  upon 
an  educational  system  for  herself  on  modern  lines. 
Elaborate  schemes  were  made  for  schools  of  all  grades. 
The  old  examination  halls  were  to  be  turned  into  colleges. 
The  examination  system,  with  its  venerable  history, 
was  first  modified,  and  then  abolished. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  missionaries  were  able 
to  render  a  service  to  China  that  the  leaders  of  the 
Chinese  people  are  the  first  to  recognize.  Outstanding 
missionary  educators  were  chosen  to  be  presidents  of 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


91 


the  new  Government  colleges ;  the  Chinese  who  had 
been  trained  in  the  Christian  schools  were  called  upon 
to  staff  the  new  Government  schools.  Everywhere  the 
missionaries  were  recognized  as  the  pioneers  of  the  new 
learning. 

With  the  passing  of  the  Imperial  House  in  1911, 
Rapid  a  &rea*  impetus  was  given  to  education  in 

Development  China.  The  country  was  now  a  republic  ; 
of  state  and  a  repUbiic  could  only  be  successful  if 

based  upon  an  educated  people.  Accord¬ 
ingly  the  new  Government  early  turned  its  attention 
to  popular  education.  New  text -books  were  prepared ; 
new  subjects  were  added ;  new  schools  were  established 
in  villages  and  towns ;  and  new  colleges  in  the  cities. 
In  the  enthusiasm  of  the  new  era,  with  fervent  educa¬ 
tionists  in  high  positions,  and  with  a  rapidly  growing 
body  of  teachers,  the  Government  system  of  education 
overtook  and  passed,  in  numerical  strength  and  in  the 
quality  of  teaching  of  some  of  the  subjects,  the  Christian 
system,  to  which  it  had  owed  its  original  impulse. 

So  that  a  new  situation  has  arisen  before  the  Christian 
educationists  in  China  to-day,  a  situation  which  demands 
a  fresh  consideration  of  the  function  and  methods  of 
Christian  schools  in  that  country.  How  can  the  Christian 
schools,  with  their  limited  resources,  keep  pace  with  the 
rapid  advance  of  the  country  ?  Is  there  any  longer  a 
need  for  Christian  schools  at  all  ?  Or  has  the  time  come 
to  relinquish  the  whole  task  to  the  Chinese  Govern¬ 
ment  ?  If  the  Christian  schools  still  have  a  definite 
place  in  the  life  of  the  people,  how  can  that  place  best 
be  filled  ? 

But  before  considering  the  position  of  the  Christian 
schools,  it  will  be  well  to  look  in  more  detail  at  the 


92 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


working  of  the  Government  system.1  This  has  been 
planned  with  great  thoroughness,  combining  and  adapt¬ 
ing  elements  from  the  systems  existing  in  other  countries. 
The  scheme  is  comprehensive  in  its  conception, 
embracing  not  only  primary,  secondary,  and  higher 
education,  but  also  education  of  the  masses  through 
popular  lectures,  reading-rooms,  libraries,  museums  and 
exhibitions.  The  whole  is  crowned  by  four  universities, 
established  in  such  centres  as  shall  enable  them  to 
serve  the  whole  country.  Broadly  speaking,  the  Central 
Government  is  responsible  for  maintaining  higher  edu¬ 
cation,  the  Provincial  Governments  for  secondary, 
and  the  local  gentry  and  village  elders  for  primary 
education ;  while  every  county  town  has  its  lecturer 
and  his  assistant,  with  lecture  hall  and  reading-room, 
daily  papers,  pictures,  charts,  magic  lantern,  gramophone, 
and  other  equipment  for  the  enlightenment  of  the 
populace. 

The  universities  are  the  power  houses  of  the  new 
culture  in  China.2  They  are  manned  by  men  versed  in 
both  the  old  and  the  new  learning,  men  searching  into 
all  fields  of  enquiry  for  the  truth,  and  making  their 
findings  known  in  papers,  magazines,  and  books,  with 
an  enthusiasm  and  an  energy  that  can  only  be  under¬ 
stood  in  a  Renaissance  Age. 

In  every  Provincial  capital,  colleges  and  secondary 3 

1  Those  desirous  of  making  a  closer  study  of  the  subject  of  education 
in  China  are  referred  to  Christian  Education  in  China  (1922).  Obtain¬ 
able  from  the  Bookroom,  Edinburgh  House,  2  Eaton  Gate,  S.W.i. 
Price  7s.  6d. 

2  See  Appendix  A,  “  Platform  of  Renaissance.” 

3  Secondary  schools  are  termed  “  middle  schools  ”  in  China,  but 
as  this  book  is  primarily  intended  for  British  readers  the  term 
“  secondary  ”  is  used  throughout  this  chapter. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


93 


schools  are  to  be  seen — courtyard  after  courtyard  of 
whitewashed  buildings,  with  an  imposing  gate  ;  technical 
colleges  well  equipped  with  laboratories  and  workshops  ; 
agricultural  colleges  with  experimental  farms  ;  training 
colleges  for  teachers  with  practising  schools  attached, 
and  experimenting  in  the  latest  methods  of  the  West ; 
professors  and  masters  handsomely  dressed  in  silk  and 
satin  ;  students  in  their  long  and  graceful  gowns. 

In  the  county  towns  the  same  scenes  are  reproduced 
on  a  smaller  scale  :  in  some  cases  secondary  schools, 
in  some  commercial  or  agricultural,  and  in  some  only 
higher  elementary  schools,  are  to  be  found.  Throughout 
the  countryside  in  the  larger  villages  new  white-walled 
houses  with  arched  windows  attract  attention ;  these 
are  the  new  primary  schools  of  which  the  village  elders 
are  so  proud.  They  used  some  of  the  temple  land  as 
a  site  for  the  buildings,  and  the  temple  trees  for  the 
roof-timbers  ;  and  informed  the  old  priest  that  in  future 
he  must  make  shift  with  what  remained  of  the  temple 
land  for  his  simple  needs  !  More  often  still  one  sees 
the  new  school  ensconced  in  the  temple  itself.  Nothing 
could  be  better  for  a  school :  the  tall  cedar  trees  in  the 
court  afford  ample  shade ;  the  surrounding  buildings, 
with  but  small  repairs,  serve  as  class-rooms  ;  the  images 
of  the  gods  must  be  content  with  the  main  hall  alone, 
or  they  may  even  be  forced  to  evacuate  that  as  well ! 

Perhaps  these  larger  schools  in  the  more  important 
market  villages  indicate  the  most  significant  advance  of 
education  in  China.  For  these  schools  are  managed  and 
financed  by  the  local  gentry  or  worthies  with  little 
or  no  assistance  from  the  Government  funds.  They 
indicate  that  the  conservative  leaders  of  opinion  through¬ 
out  the  countryside  are  now  thoroughly  alive  to  the 


94 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


importance  of  the  new  learning.  At  whatever  cost  they 
must  have  schools  for  their  children.  The  teachers  in 
these  schools,  too,  are  local  men  who  are  discharging 
their  duties  for  a  very  small  salary,  with  the  purpose 
of  serving  their  own  local  community.  For  the  most 
part  they  are  able,  resourceful,  and  enthusiastic,  and 
it  is  a  pleasure  to  meet  them. 

Lest  it  be  supposed  from  the  above  that  education  is 
now  universal  in  China,  it  must  be  stated  at  once  that 
this  system,  comprehensive  and  well  conceived  as  it 
is,  has  only  had  time  to  gather  in  a  small  proportion 
of  the  nation’s  children.  Roughly  speaking,  there  are 
four  million  children  in  the  Government  schools,  and 
one  million  in  the  Christian  schools,  a  total  of  five  millions 
out  of  a  total  population  of  something  in  the  neighbour¬ 
hood  of  four  hundred  millions,  or  about  1.25  per  cent.1 
In  a  county  of  one  thousand  villages  one  might  find 
schools  in  only  three  hundred  of  them.  We  must  bear 
in  mind  that  China  is  an  enormous  country,  and  that 
the  system  of  Government  education  has  only  been  in 
operation  for  about  fifteen  years.  It  will  take  time  to 
include  the  whole  population  in  its  range. 

One  cannot  speak  too  highly  of  the  men  at  the  head 
of  the  Government  educational  system,  for  they  are 
shouldering  their  task  not  only  with  wonderful  spirit, 
but  in  the  face  of  enormous  difficulties.  For  one  thing, 
partly  because  the  new  schools  have  no  tradition  behind 
them,  and  partly  because  of  the  political  confusion, 
the  scholars  are  for  the  most  part  out  of  hand.  Strikes 
of  students  and  scholars,  even  among  the  boys  and 

1  The  percentage  in  elementary  schools  in  the  United  States  is  19.8  ; 
in  Scotland,  17.3  ;  in  England  and  Wales,  16.5  ;  in  Germany,  13.9  ; 
in  Japan,  13.07. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


95 


girls  of  the  primary  schools,  are  of  frequent  occurrence. 
These  strikes,  being  directed  mainly  against  the  corrupt 
transactions  of  the  Government,  have  played  an  im¬ 
portant  part  in  the  development  of  a  public  spirit  in 
China.  They  are  however  disastrous  to  education  ! 

A  still  greater  difficulty  with  which  the  educationists 
have  to  contend  is  lack  of  funds.  The  military  governors 
being  at  war  with  one  another,  as  described  in  the 
first  chapter,  considerable  sums  of  money  intended  for 
education  are  diverted  for  the  upkeep  of  the  armies.  For 
a  long  period  the  salaries  of  teachers  have  been  five 
months  in  arrears.  Consider  the  position  of  a  head 
master  with  a  staff  of  thirty  teachers,  and  with  six 
hundred  boys — board,  books,  and  uniform  being  found 
by  the  school — and  the  school  income  five  months  in 
arrears!  To  quote  Professor  Be  van  once  more:  “The 
really  heroic  people  amongst  the  Chinese  are  those  who 
continue  to  do  educational  work/’ 

To  these  limitations  of  the  Government  system  must 
be  added  yet  another,  which  is  a  serious  one  from  the 
Christian  point  of  view  :  the  general  spirit  of  agnosticism 
pervading  the  Government  schools.  The  function  of 
education  is  to  impart  to  the  new  generation  the 
fundamental  experiences  of  the  race,  in  which  religion 
plays  a  central  part.  To  the  Christian,  whose  life  is 
illumined  with  a  very  definite  faith  and  hope,  the 
work  of  the  school  must  be  conceived  and  under¬ 
taken  in  that  light.  This  does  not  imply  dogmatic 
teaching,  but  it  does  necessitate  that  the  school  be 
pervaded  by  the  spirit  of  Christ.  This  can  only  be 
assured  by  a  teaching  staff  in  whose  mind  the  Master 
reigns.  Hence  the  Christian  educationists  in  China  are 
united  in  believing  that  the  recent  development  of  the 


96 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Government  system  in  no  way  lessens  the  need  for 
the  Christian  system.  It  rather  challenges  the  latter 
to  more  efficient  work,  so  that  it  may  take  a  fitting 
place  within,  and  make  a  worthy  contribution  to,  the 
complete  national  educational  system  of  China. 


The  Christian  System  of  Education  in  China 

Dr  Dewey  has  said  that  the  problem  of  the  Pacific 

Its  Aim  less  than  the  “  transfiguration 

of  the  mind  of  China,  of  the  capacity  of  the 
oldest  and  most  complicated  civilization  of  the  globe  to 
remake  itself  into  the  new  forms  required  by  the  impact 
of  immense  alien  forces.”  In  its  relation  to  this  vast 
subject  Christian  education  can  keep  two  requirements 
before  it : — • 

(1)  To  provide  as  good  an  education  as  possible  for 
the  children  of  the  Church,  and 

(2)  To  aim  at  contributing  to  the  general  educational 
needs  of  the  country  by  making  its  schools  “  model  ” 
schools  which  will  stimulate  the  non-Christian  com¬ 
munity  to  raise  their  educational  standards. 

This  means  accepting  for  the  Christian  schools  the 
entire  Government  curriculum,  but  adding  to  it  Christian 
teaching,  relying  upon  the  devotion  of  the  Christian 
teachers  and  board  of  managers  to  get  the  last  ounce 
out  of  the  opportunity  thus  presented. 

(a)  The  Village  School. — It  is  education  informed  by 
Types  of  Christian  ideals  which  the  Church  wishes 

Christian  to  forward,  and  nothing  is  more  valuable 

Schools  for  such  a  purpose  than  the  Christian 

village  school,  the  gathering  centre  of  the  best  village 
interests,  and  the  meeting-place  for  its  religious  activities. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


97 


This  is  no  mere  theory.  The  fact  that  it  can  be  done 
has  been  demonstrated  over  a  period  of  years  during 
which  the  Christian  village  school  has  been  far  more 
than  a  school ;  it  has  been  the  rallying  centre  for  the 
Christian  forces  of  the  neighbourhood ;  it  has  been 
school,  chapel  and  council-chamber.  The  village  teacher 
has  been  to  the  villagers  much  what  the  curb  was  in 
old-world  Brittany.  Nor  does  the  fact  that  their  school- 
house  is  used  outside  class  hours  as  a  village  centre 
militate  against  the  school  work  of  the  children,  for 
the  hours  in  which  the  children  are  in  class  are  hours 
when  the  grown-up  community  has  its  field  and  house 
work  to  occupy  its  time.  It  is  also  clear  gain  to  the 
pupils  to  realize  the  place  which  their  building  holds 
in  the  life  of  the  community.  They  learn  lessons  in 
citizenship  and  churchmanship  as  they  gather  about 
the  fringe  of  the  village  fathers’  council,  or  the  Church 
elders’  meetings.  The  strain  comes  upon  the  teacher 
or  teachers.  But  the  Christian  teacher  will  soon  see 
to  it  that  works  of  righteousness  undertaken  by  this 
village  are  distributed  among  a  large  number  of  people. 
Given  a  fair  degree  of  organizing  ability,  he  can  call 
to  his  aid  a  number  of  people  willing  to  serve  on  various 
committees  carrying  out  plans  of  improvement  for  the 
community,  and  for  the  church  life.  What  these  people 
need  is  someone  to  give  them  a  start,  to  show  them 
how  to  work,  and  by  the  inspiration  of  a  Christian  life 
lived  in  their  midst  to  keep  them  up  to  the  mark.  Given 
this,  they  will  carry  on.  And  it  is  just  this  initiative 
and  inspiration  that  trained  Christian  Chinese  are  giving 
in  schools  throughout  China  to-day.  A  village  school 
of  this  sort  often  reminds  one  of  the  underlying  idea  of 
the  mediaeval  university  in  Europe,  which  in  addition  to 

G 


98 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


the  special  class  to  which  it  addressed  itself  with  its 
regular  curriculum,  also  supplied  the  only  open  door — 
and  a  very  hospitable  door  it  was — for  those  among  the 
unleisured  classes  who  wished  to  gain  some  contact  with 
the  world  of  learning.  To  the  Chinese  village  teacher 
come  many  people  who  wish  to  know  what  the  news¬ 
paper  of  the  outer  world  of  cities  has  to  report ;  what 
the  probable  result  will  be  of  the  change  in  the  local 
government ;  what  can  be  done  to  combat  some  threaten¬ 
ing  plague ;  what  is  the  meaning  of  those  vague  terms, 
“  insurance/’  “  saving  societies,”  etc.,  of  which  they 
hear  in  a  general  way.  For  them  the  teacher  is  a  vade- 
mecum  ;  he  is  the  oracle.  Usually  he  gives  forth 
answers  much  more  reliable  than  those  of  his  prede¬ 
cessors  of  Delphi.  As  a  rule  the  teacher  is  also  a 
preacher  or  competent  leader  of  a  Bible  class.  If  the 
local  preachers’  association,  which  ought  to  provide  for 
the  carrying  on  of  Christian  work  in  the  village  on 
Sunday,  fails  on  any  given  day,  the  teacher  can  generally 
supply  the  deficiency.  He  can  so  lead  the  opening 
prayers  of  the  school  that  any  villagers  who  can  make 
opportunity  to  attend  can  gain  real  spiritual  benefit 
from  so  doing.  In  the  evenings  he  will  often  gather 
about  him  many  of  the  parents  who  come  for  “  Wan- 
shang-li-pai  ”  (Evensong).  Frequently  in  the  Episcopal 
communion,  such  a  teacher  will  hold  a  lay-reader’s 
licence,  or  may  even  be  in  deacon’s  orders.  In  Con¬ 
gregational  or  Presbyterian  Churches  he  may  be  a 
deacon  or  elder  of  the  Church. 

(b)  Secondary  and  Vocational  Schools. — After  six  years 
in  the  village  primary  school,  the  pupil,  if  he  shows 
signs  of  promise,  passes  into  a  Christian  secondary 
school,  which  is  usually  at  a  central  mission  station  in 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


99 


one  of  the  larger  cities.  Here  he  finds  a  far  fuller  life 
than  anything  to  which  he  has  been  accustomed.  It 
may  be  the  first  time  that  he  has  left  the  locality  of  his 
own  village,  and  he  finds  other  boys,  coming  like  himself 
from  long  distances.  Here  are  what  seem  to  him 
spacious  buildings ;  here  are  athletic  grounds,  and  a 
reading  room  and  library  such  as  he  had  never  imagined 
before ;  school  clubs  and  school  outings,  the  school 
Y.M.C.A.  with  its  Bible  Circles,  and  all  manner  of 
activities  undertaken  by  the  boys  by  way  of  community 
service  in  the  city ;  here  is  a  staff  of  keen  Chinese 
masters,  some  fresh  from  the  University,  some  with 
the  kindly  wisdom  of  years  upon  them,  but  one  and  all 
entering  into  the  corporate  life  of  the  place  ;  and,  too, 
a  number  of  missionaries — not  only  the  one  who  used  to 
visit  his  village  home  at  intervals.  One  of  the  mission¬ 
aries  perhaps  is  head  master  of  the  school.  Another 
only  comes  into  the  school  in  the  time  spared  from  his 
regular  duties  to  teach  English.  The  younger  ones  join 
the  boys  on  the  athletic  field,  or  in  rambles,  or  in  their 
social  welfare  work  in  the  city.  Sometimes  lecturers 
come  down  from  the  capital  of  the  province — eminent 
Chinese  Christians  who  have  won  fame  in  scholarship, 
or  in  practical  affairs,  or  as  preachers.  So  altogether 
this  is  a  new  and  wider  world,  with  many  contacts  with 
that  great  busy  world  still  further  away  that  breaks 
every  now  and  again  into  the  quiet  retirement  of  this 
secondary  school  just  outside  the  old-fashioned  city. 

The  secondary  school  course  lasts  for  six  years  and 
is  divided  into  junior  and  senior  courses.  The  junior 
course  is  devoted  to  general  work,  while  in  the  senior 
course  the  pupils  may  select  from  parallel  courses, 
according  to  the  probable  future  that  lies  before  them. 


100 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Those  who  show  special  intellectual  ability  may  pro¬ 
ceed  with  those  subjects  that  will  prepare  them  for 
the  Arts  and  Science  College  of  the  University,  with  a 
view  to  becoming  doctors,  teachers  or  preachers.  Those 
who  appear  more  fitted  for  trade  or  industry  may  take 
such  vocational  subjects  as  will  prepare  them  for  the 
Technical  Colleges ;  while  others  again  who  have  no 
hope  of  proceeding  to  college,  may  take  one  or  two 
years’  industrial,  commercial  or  agricultural  work  and 
then  go  straight  to  some  employment  in  the  city,  or 
return  with  a  better  trained  mind  to  work  on  the  family 
farm. 

Thus  the  Christian  secondary  schools  may  be  regarded 
as  the  chief  factor  in  building  up  the  Christian  com¬ 
munity  in  China.  Here  is  found  the  flower  of  the 
Christian  homes.  Here  the  future  leaders  of  the  Church 
are  started  on  their  way.  Here  the  sturdy  layman  of 
days  to  come  develops  the  powers  with  which  he  will 
grapple  with  the  hard  conditions  of  life,  and  finds  the 
Faith  that  will  uphold  him  through  all  things. 

In  secondary  school  work  the  question  of  English 
is  always  a  live  one  for  missionaries.  To  put  it  broadly, 
while  the  majority  of  British  missionaries  object  in 
theory  to  extending  the  teaching  of  English  in  mission 
schools,  most  of  them — in  educational  work — are  forced 
to  do  so  in  practice.  The  demand  is  so  great  that  pupils 
are  not  forthcoming,  even  in  the  higher  primary  mission 
schools,  if  English  is  omitted.  Parents  send  their 
children  to  poorer  teaching  in  private  or  Government 
schools  which  offer  English — generally  taught  by  men 
who  have  little  English  themselves — in  preference  to 
the  mission  school  where  there  is  good  general  education 
but  no  English.  Further,  all  college  work  now  includes 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


101 


so  much  teaching  given  in  English  that  pupils  must 
pass  a  certain  English  standard  before  admittance.  This 
reacts  upon  the  secondary  and  higher  primary  system. 

Where  the  missionary  can  put  aside  any  haunting 
fears  that  he  is  wasting  his  time  by  teaching  English, 
and  can  enter  whole-heartedly  into  work  which  entails 
a  large  amount  of  it,  he  can  find  a  great  evangelistic 
opportunity  in  his  secondary  school.  He  has  say  two 
hundred  and  fifty  boys  of  from  thirteen  to  twenty  years 
of  age,  trained  to  listen,  whom  he  can  address  each 
morning  at  school  chapel.  In  a  mission  secondary  school, 
which,  as  in  Canton,  Shanghai  or  Peking,  attracts  boys 
from  influential,  non-Christian  circles,  this  "  morning 
chapel”  is  a  real  opportunity.  Generally  there  is  to  be 
found  in  addition  some  voluntary  religious  association  at 
work.  At  one  school  in  Peking  a  religious  discussion  class 
is  held  weekly,  where  pupils  discuss  freely  their  difficulties. 
A  trained,  sympathetic  foreign  missionary,  acting  as 
leader  in  such  a  group,  can  do  most  important  work. 
The  following  list  gives  the  questions  brought  forward  for 
discussion  by  the  pupils  in  a  session  of  fourteen  weeks. 
Among  them  the  twelfth  subject  is  particularly  interesting 
on  account  of  its  Chinese  viewpoint  : — 

1.  Is  religion  necessary  ? 

2.  Proofs  of  the  existence  of  God. 

3.  Why  so  many  people  in  Western  countries  are 

non-Christian. 

4.  The  Trinity. 

5.  Why  can  Christianity  help  men  more  than  other 

religions  ?  Why  did  Jesus  die  ?  He  came  to  save 
men  ;  why  not  use  His  power  and  save  Himself 
and  live  to  spread  His  Gospel  over  the  world  ? 

6.  Resurrection  of  Jesus — hard  to  believe. 


102 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


7.  How  must  we  purify  ourselves  in  order  to  become 

Christians  ? 

8.  Miracles. 

9.  Prayer. 

10.  How  can  faith  become  great  ? 

11.  Can  we  become  exactly  like  Jesus  ? 

12.  How  can  a  father  and  son  be  filial  to  the  same 

Heavenly  Father  ? 

13.  How  can  we  do  God’s  work — that  is,  not  make 

mistakes  ?  How  know  His  will  ? 

14.  Can  we  be  Christians  and  not  be  baptized  ? 

15.  Why  did  God  make  the  devil  and  evil  ? 

This  was  in  a  mission  school  in  Peking  where  ninety 
per  cent  of  the  boys  were  from  non-Christian  homes. 
The  pupils  included  the  brother  of  the  then  Minister  of 
Education,  and  two  young  Manchu  princes.  Boys  from 
such  homes  come  mainly  for  the  following  reasons  :  the 
good  English  teaching — there  are  fifty  classes  a  week, 
taught  by  foreigners  ;  the  continuity  of  the  work,  which 
is  free  from  the  constant  interruption  of  "  strikes  ”  which 
go  on  in  Government  schools  ;  the  moral  care  exercised 
over  the  boys  ;  the  strict  enforcing  of  discipline. 

General  Feng  Yu-hsiang,  who  may  well  be  the  future 
Oliver  Cromwell  of  China,  was  recently  deploring  the 
way  in  which  pupils  are  allowed  to  dictate  to  their 
teachers  what  they  shall  study,  and  when,  and  how. 
A  teacher  in  a  Government  school  who  dares  to  enforce 
discipline  is  liable  to  have  the  weight  of  the  Students’ 
Union  brought  against  him,  and  to  be  dismissed  by  a 
head  master,  (or  head  of  the  local  Government  Board) 
who  fears  a  strike  and  the  resultant  reputation  of  not 
being  able  to  “  manage  affairs.” 

In  the  mission  school  referred  to  above  the  charges 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


103 


are  $17.00  1  a  term  for  tuition,  plus  $5.00  per  month 
for  food  and  $5.00  for  room  in  the  case  of  boarders. 
In  this  particular  school  the  yearly  budget  is  $15,000, 
of  which  the  foreign  mission  finds  only  $1200,  and  the 
salary  of  one  missionary.  The  missionary  in  this  case 
is  a  man  with  long  and  successful  experience  of  evangel¬ 
istic  work  in  the  country.  He  is  able  to  compare  the 
evangelistic  opportunities  in  both  kinds  of  work,  and 
is  quite  satisfied  with  that  offered  him  in  this  school. 

(c)  College  and  University  Work.  The  story  of 
Christian  higher  education  in  China  is  an  inspiring  one, 
with  a  roll  of  great  names — Theodore  Martin,  Calvin 
Mateer,  Timothy  Richard,  Moir  Duncan,  Hawks  Pott, 
and  scores  of  other  consecrated  and  able  men  and 
women  who  have  brought  the  wrork  up  to  its  present 
proportions. 

The  majority  of  the  Christian  Universities  are  union 
institutions.  They  have  only  been  made  possible  by 
all  the  missionary  societies  in  a  given  locality,  of  what¬ 
ever  denomination  and  of  whatever  nationality,  uniting 
in  one  great  effort  to  crown  the  whole  educational  system. 
If  the  secondary  schools  may  be  regarded  as  the 
keystone  of  the  educational  arch,  the  universities  may 
be  regarded  as  the  crown  of  the  whole  edifice.  Here  the 
picked  lads  of  the  secondary  schools  receive  the  best 
education  the  missions  are  capable  of  giving,  and  become 
the  leaders  of  the  Cninese  Church. 

The  original  purpose  of  the  universities  was  to 
produce  preachers,  teachers,  and  doctors,  and  so  provide 
for  the  threefold  ministry  of  missionar}/  service.  In 
recent  years  the  purpose  has  widened  so  as  to  include 
also  the  training  of  men  to  minister  to  the  material 

1  A  dollar  to-day  (November  1922)  is  worth  2s.  6d. 


104 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


needs  of  the  Chinese  Christian  community,  and  vocational 
courses  of  many  kinds  are  being  added.  This  is  an 
important  development  in  view  of  the  present  need  for 
the  Chinese  themselves  to  assume  the  leadership  of 
the  Chinese  Church.  For  a  Church  that  is  not  financially 
independent  of  outside  aid  cannot  be  regarded  as 
altogether  stable.  The  vocational  courses  both  in  higher 
and  lower  education  aim  at  the  general  economic  better¬ 
ment  of  the  Chinese  Christian  community,  so  that  there 
may  be  a  strong  foundation  upon  which  churches, 
schools,  and  hospitals  may  rest,  when  the  time  comes 
for  missions  from  Europe  and  America  to  retire  from 
the  field. 

The  problem  of  education  in  China  does  not  end  with 
the  children  who  are  privileged  to  enter 
WorkS1°n  schools,  nor  even  with  the  whole  child 
population  of  China.  The  problem  of  the 
unlettered  masses  is  a  very  real  one.  The  Chinese 
Government  is  endeavouring  to  meet  the  need  by  its 
system  of  public  lecture  halls,  to  which  reference  has 
already  been  made.1  The  Christian  forces  are  meeting 
it  indirectly  in  all  their  preaching  and  teaching  activities  : 
for  the  Gospel,  wherever  it  goes,  has  a  wonderful  en¬ 
lightening  power,  and  arouses  the  thirst  for  knowledge. 
But  in  addition  to  this,  the  Christian  workers  in  China 
are  directly  contributing  to  the  education  of  the  masses 
who  cannot  enter  or  complete  a  school  course,  by  con¬ 
tinuation  schools,  evening  classes,  and  open-air  schools. 
Some  of  this  work  consists  mainly  of  teaching  letters, 
the  essentials  of  health,  prevention  of  pests  in  crops, 
the  simple  ways  of  bettering  community  life  ;  and  so  of 
preparing  to  shoulder  the  responsibilities  of  citizenship 

1  See  Chapter  II. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


105 


Training 
of  Teachers 


in  a  democratic  state.  Some  is  undertaken  in  answer  to 
the  demand  for  commercial  and  other  vocational  courses 
by  young  men  in  business  houses.  In  the  latter  case 
the  teaching  is  undertaken  by  the  Christian  churches 
mainly  as  a  means  of  contact  with  classes  of  the 
people  that  are  not  easily  reached  in  any  other  way. 
But  in  either  case  the  work  is  only  accomplished  by 
means  of  much  voluntary  service  on  the  part  of  Chinese 
preachers,  teachers,  and  students,  and  on  the  part  of 
missionaries  and  other  Western  residents  in  China  who, 
though  not  missionaries,  desire  to  render  voluntary 
assistance  to  the  whole  movement.1 

It  is  at  once  evident  from  a  consideration  of  this 
complex  task,  and  of  the  variety  of  means 
required  to  cope  with  it,  that  the  careful 
training  of  the  men  who  are  to  handle  it 
is  essential.  In  other  words,  the  training  of  teachers 
is  the  pivot  upon  which  the  whole  undertaking  turns. 
Yet  just  here  the  weakest  point  in  the  system  is  to 
be  found.  The  human  material  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Church  in  China  is  excellent ;  the  education  given  has 
been  wide  and  good ;  but  the  specific  training  for 
definite  tasks  has  not  been  equal  to  the  demands  of  the 
situation.  Substantial  results  have  been  obtained.  But 
if  the  present  opportunities  are  to  be  grasped,  and  the 
present  problems  effectually  handled,  more  enlightened 
and  thorough  training  is  essential.  Schools  for  the 
training  of  teachers  are  the  need  of  the  hour. 

Time  and  again  are  such  schools  planned,  even  started, 
by  various  missions,  and  yet  to-day  we  look  around 
almost  in  despair  for  trained  teachers.  Of  all  the  large 
missionary  educational  institutions  in  Central  and  North 

1  See  Appendix  B,  “  Community  Service.” 


106 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


China,  so  far  as  the  writer  is  aware,  Nanking  University- 
alone  has  an  approach  to  a  satisfactory  normal  school 
on  an  adequate  scale.  The  large  Peking  University  and 
the  Shantung  Christian  University  are  both  without. 
As  a  result  students  in  college  specialize  in  science, 
medicine,  history,  commerce,  languages ;  anything  rather 
than  take  up  teaching,  for  which  they  lack  training, 
in  primary  and  secondary  schools.  One  difficulty  here 
is  not  peculiar  to  China  or  to  the  mission  school. 
The  ambitious  student  will  choose  a  special  line 
which  will  give  him  ultimately  a  professorship  in  a 
college  rather  than  a  post  as  teacher  in  a  village.  The 
Government  normal  schools  constantly  find  that  their 
brilliant  pupils  who  take  the  teacher  training  course  for 
reasons  of  poverty — the  normal  school  gives  financial 
assistance  not  given  in  other  schools — find  an  excuse 
to  leave  the  school  before  their  course  terminates,  and 
get  into  a  secondary  school  (with  a  University  course 
as  the  next  step)  or  a  Technical  College  which  opens 
careers  in  engineering,  surveying,  etc. 

But  the  Government  Educational  Board  has  at  least 
got  its  normal  schools  going,  and  in  spite  of  the  above 
consideration  graduates  of  these  schools  are  ahead  in 
teaching  ability  of  the  man  who  has  gone  through  a 
mission  school  and  obtained  a  good  general  education, 
but  no  knowledge  of  the  theory  and  practice  of  teach¬ 
ing.  There  is  no  more  crying  need  to-day  in  the  whole 
missionary  work  in  China  than  to  find  properly  trained 
teachers  to  staff  our  primary  and  secondary  schools.  If, 
in  addition  to  training  in  teaching,  we  can  continue  to  give 
specialist  education  in  higher  arts  and  special  sciences, 
well  and  good,  but  if  it  is  to  be  a  choice  between  the 
two,  then  by  all  means  let  us  choose  the  training  of 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


107 


teachers  for  the  lower  schools  as  our  contribution  to 
education  in  China.  We  have  frankly  to  recognize 
that  mission  schools  can  only  retain  a  position  of  leader¬ 
ship  to-day  if  they  are  staffed  by  men  who  are  capable 
of  holding  their  own  when  placed  vis-d-vis  with  the 
Government  normal  school  graduates.  To  cover  the 
ground  required  by  the  modern  exacting  schedule  a 
teacher  needs  to  be  master  of  his  craft ;  he  needs  not 
only  knowledge  of  certain  subjects — here  the  mission 
teachers  have  generally  been  on  a  high  average — but 
ability  to  impart  that  knowledge. 

The  education  of  girls  has  followed  much  the  same 
lines  as  the  education  of  boys,  but  on  a 
“n  smaller  scale.  From  the  commencement 
it  was  a  more  difficult  problem,  for  few 
were  sufficiently  enlightened  to  desire  for  their  daughters 
any  further  education  than  the  practical  knowledge 
of  household  functions  :  the  preparation  of  food,  the 
spinning  of  cotton,  the  making  of  clothes,  and  the 
lighter  work  of  the  farmstead.  Hence  schools  for  girls 
have  always  been  far  fewer  than  those  for  boys.  But 
even  so,  here  also  the  missionaries  were  the  heralds  of  a 
new  day ;  and  the  lead  acquired  by  the  mission  schools 
in  this  direction  has  not  been  lost.  Government  edu¬ 
cation  for  girls  has  been  largely  inspired  by  the  Christian 
schools ;  and  the  Government  girls’  schools  are  still 
largely  staffed  by  Christian  teachers.  While  outside 
of  the  Christian  churches  in  China  hardly  more  than 
one  woman  in  a  thousand  can  read,  forty  per  cent 
of  the  Christian  women  can  do  so. 

But  here  again  we  cannot  rest  content  with  laurels 
won  in  the  past.  For  Chinese  educationists,  with 
characteristic  spirit,  are  bestirring  themselves  in  this 


108 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


part  of  their  programme.  Already  their  women’s 
colleges  are  doing  work  of  a  high  order.  Co-education 
is  already  accepted  as  the  natural  course,  and  is  being 
rapidly  adopted,  both  in  the  lower  elementary  schools 
and  in  the  colleges. 

The  Place  of  the  Christian  System  in 

Chinese  Life 

Now  what  about  the  products  of  Christian  education  ? 
Here  before  generalizing,  one  would  fain  speak  of  some 
of  the  treasure  trove  won  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  by 
this  agency. 

Years  ago,  in  the  suburbs  of  a  great  western  city  of 
China,  there  appeared  a  ragged,  filthy  urchin,  homeless, 
uncared-for,  gaining  his  precarious  morsel  of  food  by 
sweeping  up  the  frowzy  litter  of  a  neighbouring  opium 
den.  For  some  reason  he  had  drifted  into  this  place, 
and  being  a  quick,  teachable  lad,  had  been  kept  by 
the  proprietor.  During  one  of  his  raids  into  a  neighbour¬ 
ing  street  he  saw  that  an  Englishman  was  moving  into 
a  little  house,  and  that  the  fetching  and  carrying  in¬ 
evitable  in  such  a  process  promised  at  least  a  casual 
job  ;  it  might  even  be — though  this  seemed  too  good 
to  be  true — a  permanent  job,  and  an  escape  from  the 
sickening  scenes  and  fumes  of  the  opium  den.  At  any 
rate  he  plucked  up  courage  to  ask  for  the  work  of  sifting 
out  rubbish,  fetching  and  carrying.  He  was  an  appalling 
little  object,  but  the  missionary,  who  was  new  to  the 
district,  took  him  on  for  want  of  anyone  better.  Imagine 
then  the  Englishman,  with  the  minimum  of  Chinese 
language,  and  this  little  waif  setting  out  to  keep  home 
together.  The  first  difficulty  arose  from  the  boy’s  fear 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


109 


of  ghosts.  “  Foreign  devils  ”  he  might  brave,  but  the 
disembodied  devils  which,  according  to  the  neighbours’ 
tales,  lurked  in  the  old  house,  were  too  much  for  him  ! 
He  refused  to  sleep  in  the  place  unless  his  master  stayed 
there  also.  All  the  waste  products  of  a  complicated 
system  of  superstition,  all  the  mass  of  dimly  compre¬ 
hended  filthy  talk  which  in  the  opium  den  had  met 
his  ears,  all  the  low  aspects  of  life,  the  strangeness  to 
honesty  and  truth,  the  steadily  deepening  degradation 
through  which  such  a  child  had  passed — all  this  had 
had  freedom  to  affect  his  little  heart  and  brain.  And 
yet  even  here  there  was  the  possibility  of  recognition 
of  the  call  of  divine  grace.  He  could  appreciate  beauty  ; 
he  could  even  for  a  time  appreciate  the  benefits  of  order. 

The  boy  was  sent  as  a  pupil  to  a  mission  primary  school, 
and  there  went  through  a  four  years’  course.  What  he 
learned  there  changed  his  whole  outlook.  He  was 
taken  into  a  small  printing  press  run  by  the  mission, 
did  good  service  there,  and  conceived  the  ambition  to  go 
to  Shanghai  where  he  could  learn  a  higher  branch  of 
printing.  By  careful  saving,  by  steady  application,  by 
the  willingness  to  turn  to  any  odd  job,  however  menial, 
in  order  to  find  the  wherewithal  needed,  he  was  able, 
with  the  good-will  of  the  mission,  to  make  his  way  to 
Shanghai,  where  he  knew  no  one  save  a  foreign  mis¬ 
sionary,  and  him  but  slightly. 

All  the  lure  of  that  city,  perhaps  the  most  wicked  city 
in  the  world,  was  spread  before  him.  There  was  nobody  to 
restrain  him  ;  no  fear  that  ill  deeds  of  his  would  be  known 
to  his  friends.  Yet  in  spite  of  all  such  opportunities 
for  licence  he  gave  himself  up  to  live  a  clean  and  Christian 
life.  He  found  his  friends  amongst  the  humble  Christians 
in  the  little  independent  Chinese  Church.  Presently 


110 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


he  found  a  class  of  children  to  teach  in  connection  with 
the  Sunday  School  carried  on  from  the  headquarters 
of  the  China  Inland  Mission.  He  made  a  humble  but 
beautiful  Christian  home  in  that  great  city.  For  many 
years  he  has  steadily  grown  in  usefulness  and  in  the 
knowledge  of  his  trade,  and  to-day  he  is  a  lithographer 
and  earning  good  money.  When  his  old  master  passed 
through  Shanghai,  it  was  the  delight  of  his  Chinese  friend 
to  seek  him  out,  to  drop  the  dignity  of  the  well-to-do 
Chinese  printer,  and  to  act  as  his  servant  once  more. 
Of  his  substance  he  gives  generously  to  God’s  work,  and 
so  with  his  time  and  his  strength.  We  called  him  the 
“  Treasure  ”  ;  at  first  in  fancy,  but  he  has  turned  out  a 
treasure  in  fact. 

Perhaps  one  such  instance  of  the  work  that  can  be  done 
in  those  simple  Christian  schools  may  be  of  more  value 
than  explanations  of  their  system  and  many  statistics. 

You  will  find  the  ex-pupils  of  the  Christian  schools  in 
the  Cabinet,  in  the  Civil  Service,  and  in  the  large  business 
houses.  Some  of  them  are  out-and-out  Christians ; 
others,  who  have  never  professed  Christianity,  show 
the  influence  of  a  Christian  training  upon  their  lives. 

In  the  spring  of  1922,  much  was  heard  of  the  Student 
Anti-Christian  movement  on  the  occasion  of  the  meeting 
of  the  World’s  Student  Christian  Federation  Conference 
in  Peking.  At  the  heart  of  this  movement  there  is  a 
genuine  distrust  of  organized  Christian,  and  particularly 
foreign  Christian,  effort.  It  is  held  by  a  few  modern 
trained  Chinese  who  are  sincere  and  unselfish  though 
very  extreme.  But,  unfortunately,  their  views  were 
exploited  by  many  who  had  no  religious  or  moral 
interest  in  the  question  at  issue,  but  used  it  as  a  political 
and  economic  weapon.  The  active  Anti-Christian  move- 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


111 


ment  in  China  is  not  large.  It  is  significant  that  the 
Peking  Express ,  the  sane,  useful  organ  of  the  Chinese 
Peking  students,  deprecated  the  attack,  and  pleaded 
that  the  strength  so  used  should  be  turned  against  the 
corruption  in  high  places  of  Chinese  administration 
which  was  destroying  the  life  of  the  nation. 

As  against  this  somewhat  noisy  anti-Christian  action 
one  can  set  the  quiet  but  constant  intercourse  going 
on  between  the  Government  colleges  and  those  of 
the  Christian  Church.  This  intercourse  is  seen  in  con¬ 
certed  efforts  for  municipal  development,  relief  work 
of  various  kinds,  inter-collegiate  debates,  athletic  con¬ 
tests,  student  magazine  exchanges,  and  in  many  other 
ways.  Such  an  intercourse  is  healthy  for  the  students 
of  the  mission  colleges  in  giving  them  contact  with  the 
wider  Chinese  world,  and  is  of  real  blessing  to  the  students 
in  the  Government  institutions. 


This  term  in  China  refers  to  the  student  who  has 
returned  from  a  course  of  college  training 
studfntUrned  Europe  or  America.  These  students 
are  regarded  as  the  flower  of  the  Chinese 
educational  world.  In  spite  of  those  who  go  wrong 
abroad,  or  who,  upon  returning  to  China,  cannot  put 
their  knowledge  to  practical  use,  it  is  from  the  ranks  of 
the  returned  students  that  China’s  leaders  come.  (The 
one  exception  is  the  military  world  :  of  the  outstanding 
figures  in  China  to-day,  Feng  Yii-hsiang,  Wu  Pei-fu, 
Chang  Tso-lin  and  the  President  Li  Yuan-hung,  are  the 
four  who  have  not  been  to  Europe  or  America,  and 
they  are  soldiers.)  The  Christian  Church  has  benefited 
greatly  by  this  more  direct  contact  with  the  wider 
world.  Among  the  outstanding  men  in  the  Church 


112 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


who  have  gained  enormously  by  a  residence  abroad 
one  might  mention  Cheng  Ching-yi,  Chairman  of  the 
great  All-China  Christian  Conference  held  in  Shanghai 
in  May  1922  ;  Chang  Po-ling,  a  Christian  leader  who 
is  Principal  of  Nan  K’ai,  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  purely 
Chinese  educational  institutions  in  China ;  Timothy 
Lew,  Dean  of  Theology  in  Peking  University ;  and 
David  Yui,  General  Secretary  of  the  National  Executive 
of  the  Y.M.C.A.  in  China,  and  “  People’s  Delegate  ”  to 
the  Washington  Conference. 

High  up  in  one  of  the  Government  ministries  to-day 
is  a  former  student  of  the  Shantung  Christian  University, 
trained  later  at  Yale  and  Columbia,  a  man  who  works 
hard  every  Sunday,  early  and  late,  at  the  Church  and 
Sunday  School  near  his  home.  The  Chinese  minister 
of  this  Church,  himself  a  pupil  of  the  late  Dr  P.  T. 
Forsyth  and  of  Dr  Garvie,  told  the  writer  that  with 
half  a  dozen  such  lay  workers  as  this  Christian  Govern¬ 
ment  official,  they  could  win  their  district  of  Peking 
for  Christ.  He  was  very  emphatic  upon  the  value  of 
the  full  training  which  such  men  have  received. 

As  a  result  of  careful  experience  and  observation, 
the  opinion  is  widely  held  to-day  that  the  Chinese  Church 
and  Christian  missions  would  do  well  to  send  a  few 
specially  picked  men  of  strong  Christian  character 
abroad ;  men  who  are  old  enough  to  stand  against 
the  temptations  they  will  meet,  and  who  have  already 
done  work  for  the  Church  and  consequently  know  what 
to  look  for  when  abroad.  It  has  been  found  that  such 
men  put  in  faithful  class  work  and  seek  Christian  fellow¬ 
ship  in  the  Churches,  the  Universities  and  the  various 
Christian  Summer  Conferences  whilst  abroad.  And  they 
bring  back  a  perspective  in  their  planning,  a  charity  in 


**  »*  *  mm: 

;  m  i  i 

,  ;  ;  s  #$$&«  #  «fc,  *  <*»r 
*C>®  «  m 


The  Work  of  the  Teacher 

An  informal  class  on  the  steps  of  the  Catiton  Christia?i  College. 


Chinese  Girls  at  School 

Girls  of  St  Hilda's ,  Canton ,  ready  for  drill.  This  part  of  Canton  is 
called  “ The  City  of  the  Dead,"  because  here  coffins  await  burial  until  the  priest 
has  found  a  suitable  grave.  A  portion  of  the  vast  building  has  been  converted 
into  the  school,  forty  “  coffin  rooms  ”  being  pulled  down  for  the  purpose. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  TEACHER 


113 


their  judgments,  an  enriched  imagination,  and  a  trained 
power  of  persistent  application  which  are  invaluable  to 
the  Chinese  Church.  It  is  the  sight  of  such  men,  humbly 
and  faithfully  following  their  Lord  along  the  hard  road 
of  Christian  leadership,  which  makes  the  missionary  of 
long  experience  in  China  feel  that  the  Chinese  Church 
has  had  under-shepherds  gifted  to  her  whom  the  Good 
Shepherd  Himself  can  own  and  bless. 


H 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 

The  whole  mission  of  the  Church  to  the  world  has 
unfolded  slowly.  Not  for  many  years  after  she  had 
realized  her  duty  to  preach  the  Gospel  did  the  Church, 
whose  members  at  home  knew  the  benefits  of  modern 
methods  of  healing,  realize  that  Christ’s  followers  are 
called  upon  not  only  to  preach  and  to  teach,  but  also 
to  heal.  Yet  her  realization  of  this  duty  was  bound 
to  come.  The  Holy  Spirit  which  sent  men  forth  to 
preach  opened  their  eyes,  in  the  lands  to  which  they 
went,  to  the  terrible  sufferings  under  which  the  millions 
groaned ;  sufferings  which  could  be  relieved  provided 
that  the  Church’s  duty  in  the  work  of  healing  was  under¬ 
stood  clearly,  and  undertaken  faithfully. 

The  first  step  in  such  enlightenment  came  when  the 
missionary  saw  the  people  about  him  suffering  from 
diseases  which  even  his  layman’s  skill  knew  how  to 
alleviate,  and  the  simple  remedies  which  he  carried  with 
him  for  his  own  needs  were  used  for  the  needs  of  others. 
The  second  step  was  taken  when  appeals  were  sent 
home  by  these  missionaries  for  doctors  to  make  the 
work  of  their  stations  complete.  At  this  stage  it  was 
still  not  generally  understood  that  healing  for  its  own 
sake  was  a  duty  laid  upon  the  Church.  Frequently 
the  idea  held  that  the  dispensary — or  at  a  later  date 
the  hospital — was  simply  a  door  through  which  men 

114 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


115 


might  enter  the  preaching-hall ;  healing  was  the  bell 
which  should  ring  men  to  church.  The  third  stage 
came  when  both  medicals  and  evangelists  grasped  the 
fact  that  the  Church  was  debtor  to  the  whole  of  the 
nation  in  which  she  lived  with  respect  to  this  Mission 
of  Healing,  and  that  her  debt  could  not  be  discharged 
until  a  national  conscience  had  been  aroused  with  regard 
to  the  healing  of  the  sick.  The  nation  needed  to  be 
taught  that  many  of  her  sons  and  daughters  ought  to 
be  trained  to  act  as  doctors  and  nurses.  And  not 
only  to  heal.  They  had  in  their  turn  to  create  and 
carry  on  the  tradition  that  in  a  properly  governed 
country  the  duty  of  adequate  medical  training  must 
be  undertaken  by  the  Government  if  private  enterprise 
does  not  meet  the  need.  Added  to  the  above  perception, 
it  was  also  borne  in  upon  the  missionaries’  minds  that 
much  of  the  suffering  about  them  could  easily  be  pre¬ 
vented  if  a  public  opinion  could  be  created  to  do  battle 
with  those  customs  which  permitted  the  perpetuation  of 
habits  clearly  recognized  as  injurious  to  health  ;  and 
still  more  to  do  battle  with  the  ignorance  and  indifference 
which  tolerated  general  conditions  that  were  horrible,  as 
well  as  unnecessary,  from  a  sanitary  point  of  view.  All 
this  called  for  a  further  effort  in  the  way  of  prevention. 

Thus  we  see  that  missionary  work  from  its  medical 
side  falls  into  three  divisions,  the  preventive,  the  remedial, 
and  the  reproductive.  This  three-fold  task  is  being 
undertaken  in  China. 

Preventive  Work 

Under  this  heading  falls  the  work  of  helping  the 
whole  nation  to  understand  the  evils  arising  from  lack 


116 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


of  sanitation,  from  the  promiscuous  herding  together  of 
people  suffering  from  such  diseases  as  tuberculosis  and 
leprosy,  from  the  exposure  of  food  for  sale  under  filthy 
conditions,  and  so  on.  At  first  sight  it  might  seem  im¬ 
possible  for  this  work  to  be  done  on  anything  like  an 
adequate  scale,  and  in  such  a  way  that  the  people  would 
receive  the  new  teaching  in  good  part.  Yet  it  is  being 
done,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  entails  teaching 
the  majority  of  the  people  to  break  away  from  harmful 
customs,  and  persuading  them  to  endure  expense  and 
inconvenience  which  to  them  had  previously  seemed 
unnecessary.  The  teaching  is  being  given  through  the 
thousands  of  schools  throughout  China.  How  have 
the  schools  been  taught  ?  How  could  the  teachers  be 
persuaded  to  grasp  the  importance  of  such  lessons,  and 
be  shown  how  to  make  clear  the  lesson  to  their  pupils  ? 
How  were  the  children  able  so  to  grasp  essential  truths 
that  they  could,  on  returning  home,  make  clear  to  their 
parents  that  certain  changes  might  with  advantage  be 
made  ?  Above  all,  how  could  teachers  and  pupils 
be  taught  this  in  such  a  way  that  their  imagina¬ 
tions  were  captured  so  that  they  would  do  the  work 
with  real  delight  and  zest  ?  Remembering  the  limited 
number  of  schools  and  the  very  few  people  who  had  the 
ability  to  pass  on  to  them  the  necessary  technical  in¬ 
formation,  that  so  much  has  been  accomplished  is  a 
matter  for  surprise  and.  thankfulness. 

It  was  done  in  the  early  days  by  hundreds  of  in¬ 
dividual  friendships  between  the  men  who  knew  and  the 
men  who  wanted  to  know.  On  the  one  hand  there  was 
the  foreign  missionary,  whether  evangelist,  teacher,  or 
doctor,  who  had  the  broad  education,  the  fresh  mind, 
the  ready  perception  and  quick  sympathy  to  see  the 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


117 


importance  of  such  questions  to  the  whole  mission  of 
the  Church.  On  the  other  hand  there  was  the  Chinese, 
whether  magistrate,  scholar,  merchant,  or  teacher,  whose 
friendship  had  been  previously  won  by  some  missionary 
who,  in  addition  to  preaching  to  men,  was  willing  also 
to  give  time  to  listening  to  them.  Many  such  Chinese 
were  willing  to  help  their  people  if  they  could  be  shown 
the  way  and  given  a  start.  They  were  ready  to  help 
in  the  effort  which  the  missionary  could  put  forth  as 
soon  as  he  had  trained  assistants — the  products  of 
mission  schools  where  such  ideas  had  been  steadily 
inculcated — to  do  the  work.  By  visits  paid  to  private 
and  Government  schools  under  purely  Chinese  auspices 
the  good  work  progressed.  Such  efforts  created  a  body 
of  opinion  in  many  districts  which  could  be  relied  upon 
to  support  more  direct  methods.  Of  these  direct  efforts, 
apart  from  the  steady  object  lesson  of  the  methods  of 
cleanliness  and  order  in  the  hospitals  themselves,  two 
in  particular  should  be  noted  here. 

The  first  is  the  popular  museum.  Not  the  dry-as-dust 
museum  through  which  some  of  us  have 
dragged  unwilling  feet,  but  a  museum  so 
arranged  that  every  case  is  given  a  human  interest, 
is  made  to  be  a  gain  instead  of  a  task,  and  where  with 
a  simple  popular  explanation  the  visitor  goes  delightedly 
from  room  to  room,  from  deduction  to  deduction.  To 
such  a  museum  tens  of  thousands  of  people  will  go. 

But  however  interesting  the  museum  may  be  to  the 
general  visitor,  for  the  purpose  of  preventive  medicine 
its  real  value  is  to  be  found  in  regular  visits  from  the 
Government  schools  throughout  the  whole  area  at  times 
when  no  other  visitors  are  allowed.  These  visits,  repeated 
at  intervals  during  the  school  year,  are  regarded  as  part 


The  Museum 


118 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


of  the  curriculum,  and  result  in  tens  of  thousands  of 
keenly  interested  children  going  home  to  teach  their 
villages  how  to  fight  disease-carriers. 

These  museums  are  all  too  few  in  number.  One  of 
the  most  successful  is  that  at  Tsinan  in  Shantung.  This 
is  the  result  of  forty  years’  experience  by  a  man  parti¬ 
cularly  fitted  for  this  work,  the  Rev.  J.  S.  Whitewright, 
who  has  experimented  along  these  lines  ever  since  the 
commencement  of  his  work  in  China.  The  only  museum 
which  the  writer  can  think  of  which  approaches  the 
Tsinan  one  in  its  power  to  affect  the  mind,  the  im¬ 
agination,  and  the  will  of  the  visitor,  is  the  Government’s 
wonderful  effort  on  the  Maidan  in  Calcutta.  But  the 
Calcutta  effort  loses  by  comparison  because,  with  all 
its  superiority  in  funds  and  Government  facilities,  it 
lacks  the  dynamic  which  stimulates  the  personal  service 
given  by  the  assistants  who  show  the  visitors  around 
the  various  departments  in  the  museum  at  Tsinan. 
The  dynamic  at  Tsinan  is  religious  ;  the  desire  to  use 
any  means  if  only  men  may  find  Jesus  Christ.  This 
motive  it  is  which  enables  the  director  and  his 
staff  to  go  on  year  after  year  with  their  work.  Even 
here  the  flame  of  zeal  may  at  times  burn  but  dimly  : 
times  of  weariness  come ;  this  assistant  proves  un¬ 
worthy  ;  that  method  is  shown  to  be  unsuitable.  But 
the  informing  motive  is  always  there,  and  again  and 
again  overcomes  these  and  other  difficulties,  in  par¬ 
ticular  the  temporary  inertia  caused  by  the  sameness 
of  the  task  where  repetition,  abundant  repetition,  is 
unavoidable  if  the  lessons  of  the  museum  are  to  be 
impressed  upon  the  general  consciousness  of  a  wide 
district. 

To  mention  only  one  of  the  lines  of  instruction  given 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


119 


at  these  museum  centres — the  battle  against  flies. 
Models  can  be  seen  of  Chinese  pedlars  sitting  at  their 
stalls  in  the  street,  with  sliced  melons  set  out  before 
them  to  attract  customers.  Whether  they  attract 
customers  or  not,  the  melons  certainly  attract  the  flies, 
which  are  seen  swarming  on  them.  In  another  part 
of  the  model  one  sees  the  fly  busy  crawling  about  the 
garbage.  Then  there  is  a  model  of  the  fly  magnified 
a  hundred  times,  showing  its  dirt-carrying  feet.  This 
is  all  set  out  so  simply,  yet  so  convincingly,  that  the 
most  illiterate  old  woman  from  the  country  village, 
the  young  child  in  the  primary  school,  can  follow  its 
argument.  Other  models  in  such  a  museum  deal  with 
the  work  of  the  Red  Cross,  the  sanitary  arrangements 
in  the  Chinese  Labour  Corps,  and  so  on. 

A  more  extensive  method  of  teaching  preventive 
medicine  is  that  adopted  by  a  combined 
Lecture^Work  Board,  working  under  the  direction  of  the 
American  Red  Cross,  and  having  close 
relations  with  the  China  Continuation  Committee,  the 
Y.M.C.A.,  and  the  Government  Educational  Board. 
Dr  Peter,  who  bears  the  main  brunt  of  this  Board’s 
work  upon  his  shoulders,  has  for  years  travelled  through 
the  country,  holding  mass  meetings  of  students  in  large 
centres,  giving  demonstrations  and  lectures  on  the 
necessity  of  sanitation.  For  years  “  Swat  that  Fly  ” 
was  his  slogan,  and  he  has  also  conducted  crusades 
against  tuberculosis  and  venereal  diseases. 

Fighting  against  plague  has  been  another  great  branch 
of  preventive  medical  work,  and  no  branch 
Plague^2  has  more  captured  the  imagination  of  the 
general  public  and  the  Chinese  Government. 
The  foreign  missionary  hospitals  of  Peking  and  Moukden 


120 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


in  particular  have  been  associated  with  this  work.  In 
areas  threatened  with  famine,  one  part  of  preventive 
medical  work  is  to  fight  against  famine’s  corollary, 
typhus.  Much  work  has  been  done  in  military  camps, 
especially  after  engagements,  to  procure  adequate 
sanitary  arrangements,  and  so  prevent  the  outbreak 
of  epidemics  owing  to  temporarily  crowded  conditions. 
The  necessity  for  this  was  exemplified  lately  during 
the  recent  struggle  between  the  North  China  and  the 
Manchurian  armies,  when  good  work  was  done  in  the 
White  Cloud  Temple,  near  Peking,  which  was  prepared 
as  a  base  hospital  for  the  reception  of  the  wounded. 

Remedial  Work 

Under  this  heading  we  include  most  of  what  would 
be  called  the  ordinary  work  of  the  healer.  Up  to  the 
present  nearly  all  medical  work  in  China,  to  have 
medical  value,  has  had  to  be  done  in  hospitals  under 
the  auspices  of  the  doctor  himself.  (That  is  to  say, 
the  private  nursing  home  has  not  yet  appeared  in 
China  so  far  as  purely  Chinese  efforts  are  concerned.) 
The  reason  for  this  is  obvious,  and  will  continue  to 
exist  until  many  generally  received  ideas  as  to  the 
treatment  of  patients  in  the  home  are  changed.  The 
Chinese  have  yet  to  learn  the  necessity  of  keeping  wounds 
clean  ;  the  undesirability  of  undoing  the  doctor’s  dress¬ 
ings  in  order  to  display  proudly  to  interested  neighbours 
what  an  important  wound  the  patient  can  boast ;  the 
advisability,  or  otherwise,  of  giving  the  patient  anything 
he  or  she  fancies  to  eat,  from  acid  apples  to  fat  pork  ;  the 
necessity  of  safeguarding  against  noisy  weeping  around 
the  patient’s  bed ;  and  against  surreptitious  attempts 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


121 


to  impose  filthy  sticking  plasters — spread  by  the  medical 
men  of  the  old  school — upon  the  patient,  in  order  to 
please  the  “  lao  tai-tai  ”  (the  elderly  grandmamma  of  the 
family).  Until  all  this  is  accomplished  it  is  impossible 
to  treat  the  patient  seriously  except  at  the  hospital. 

While  this  means  a  heavy  financial  burden  in  early 
years,  until  the  hospital  is  so  well  established  that  it 
can  pay  a  good  proportion  of  its  running  expenses, 
it  has  an  immense  value  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
Christian  missionary.  There  is  time  to  establish  friendly 
personal  relations  between  the  patient  and  his  friends 
and  the  Christian  hospital  staff.  There  is  time  during 
convalescence  to  interest  the  patient  in  Christian  teach¬ 
ing,  although  this  is  not  forced  upon  him — he  need  not 
attend  if  he  has  conscientious  objections  to  it.  In 
cases  of  illiteracy,  particularly  among  the  women,  there 
is  time  to  comply  with  the  patient’s  frequently  expressed 
desire  to  learn  to  read.  When  she  leaves  the  hospital 
she  has  learnt  by  heart  some  small  catechism,  a  few 
hymns,  some  important  portions  of  the  Gospels ;  she 
has  also  learned  to  recognize  so  many  of  the  printed 
characters  contained  in  the  catechism  and  Gospel 
portions  that  she  can,  at  home,  refresh  her  memory  by 
the  printed  character  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
hand,  make  sure  of  half-recognized  characters  by  her 
memory  of  the  general  text.  In  this  way  she  becomes 
a  reader.1  One  frequently  finds  that  such  a  woman 
is  gradually  able,  with  the  help  thus  gained  in  the 

1  The  phonetic  script  referred  to  in  Chapter  V  has  been  of  great 
assistance  here.  Not  only  have  many  patients  learned  to  read  it 
while  in  hospital,  but  trained  assistants  from  the  hospital  follow  up 
such  patients  in  their  own  districts,  and  there  combine  simple  out¬ 
patient  work  with  the  organizing  of  centres  in  which  the  Bible  is  studied 
in  the  phonetic  script. 


122 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


hospital,  to  read  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament,  and 
she  is  generally  so  proud  of  her  attainments  that  she 
constantly  exhorts  the  women  of  the  village  to  become 
readers  likewise.  The  Chinese  woman  may  be  rather 
slow  in  getting  a  new  idea  into  her  head,  but  she  is 
singularly  tenacious  about  it  when  it  has  once  obtained 
a  lodgment.  Once  he  has  had  any  considerable  ex¬ 
perience  of  the  importunate  Chinese  widow,  the  mere 
male  cannot  but  have  a  certain  amount  of  sneaking 
sympathy  with  the  unjust  judge  in  the  parable. 

With  the  hospital  well  established,  valuable  work  can 
be  done  at  out-stations  where  the  doctor  or  his  assistants 
can  be  in  attendance  on  stated  days  of  the  month. 
These  are  really  casualty  clearing-stations,  and  would 
be  of  little  use  medically,  except  as  related  to  the  base 
hospital ;  but  they  also  result  in  an  easier  approach  for 
a  presentation  of  the  Gospel  by  the  Chinese  evangelists 
who  are  preaching  there. 

In  this  section  it  is  but  fair  to  mention  that 
medicine,  as  distinct  from  surgery,  is  only  now — and 
that  very  slowly — coming  into  its  own  in  China.  The 
same  Chinese  who  avail  themselves  of  Western  surgery, 
distrust  and  dislike  Western  methods  of  medicine ; 
that  is,  they  welcome  the  surgeon,  but  they  have  little 
use  for  the  physician.  It  is  easy  to  understand  the 
reason  for  this  distinction.  When  we  recollect  the 
practical  common  sense  of  the  Chinese  people  combined 
with  their  fearless  passion  for  experiment — their  wish 
“  to  see  the  wheels  go  round  ”  1 — it  is  easy  to  believe 

1  Anyone  who  had  much  to  do  with  the  Chinese  Labour  Corps  in 
France  knows  how  keen  the  men  were  in  this  experimentation.  They 
simply  could  not  be  kept  from  handling  bombs  and  playing  with  levers 
and  wires  to  "  kan-kan  ”  (see  what  it  was  all  about)  no  matter  how 
dangerous  it  might  be. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


123 


that  the  old-style  Chinese  doctors  must  have  gained 
considerable  empirical  knowledge  of  herbs,  of  medicinal 
waters,  of  hydropathy  and  so  on.  And  since  there  is 
little  that  is  dramatic  about  the  physician’s  treatment, 
and  as  the  results  of  such  treatment  are  usually  slow 
and  gradual,  it  follows  that  as  compared  with  the  old 
Chinese  methods  the  Western  ones  did  not  seem  to 
have  any  claim  to  special  consideration.  Added  to  this 
there  is  the  Chinese  distrust  of  the  Western  physician’s 
passion  for  cleanliness,  and  his  everlasting  soap  and 
water.  * 

The  number  of  these  missionary  hospitals  is  of  less 
importance  than  their  quality.  One  hospital  in  which 
certain  desirable  features  are  to  be  found  is  more  im¬ 
portant  than  two  without  them.  The  hospital  built  to 
the  glory  of  God  and  in  the  name  of  Him  who  is  the 
great  Healer  of  the  soul  should  aim  at  the  best  method 
of  healing  the  body.  We  need  to  distinguish  carefully 
between  the  adequate  and  the  elaborate.  There  are 
cottage  hospitals  in  China  which  are  simple  and  in¬ 
expensive,  and  which  yet  are,  from  a  scientific  and 
hygienic  standpoint,  models  of  what  such  hospitals 
should  be.1  Certain  portions  of  a  hospital  equipment — 
for  example,  the  surgical  instruments — are  of  necessity 
costly :  anything  second-rate  here  would  be  the  reverse 
of  economy.  But  there  is  no  need  for  the  shell  of  the 
building  to  be  elaborate  provided  that  hygienic  conditions 
can  be  ensured.  Indeed,  elaboration  defeats  one  of  the 
main  ends  in  view,  which  is  that  the  hospital  should 

1  Such  a  hospital  is  that  at  Tungshien,  Chihli,  where  a  special  point 
is  made  of  using  materials  which  can  be  obtained  locally,  and  used, 
as  far  as  is  consistent  with  efficiency,  in  ways  which  the  Chinese  can 

easily  copy. 


124 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


provide  a  model  within  the  compass  of  the  Chinese 
Christian  medical  community  to  reproduce  for  itself. 
What  applies  to  evangelistic  work  is  certainly  equally 
applicable  to  medical.  No  one  would  dream  of  being 
able  to  cover  the  needy  spots  in  China  with  hospitals 
built  and  staffed  by  foreign  missionary  effort ;  the  mis¬ 
sionary  contribution  can  meet  but  a  small  part  of  the 
need  if  that  contribution  is  to  be  measured  by  the  actual 
number  of  foreign  medical  workers  and  the  buildings 
they  use.  But  if  the  missions  can  provide  hospitals 
which  are  thoroughly  efficient,  and  of  which  the  main 
features  can  be  reproduced  by  the  Chinese  themselves, 
then  their  contribution  is  immense  ;  they  have  produced 
a  type  which  will  persist  whether  the  foreigner  is  there 
or  not. 

One  institution  in  China  stands  apart  :  the  Peking 
Union  Medical  College,  which  is  perhaps  the  most 
elaborate  institution  of  its  kind  in  Asia.  It  was  founded 
in  1906  by  various  Mission  Boards  in  America  and 
Britain.  In  1915  the  China  Medical  Board  of  the 
Rockefeller  Foundation  assumed  the  full  support  of  the 
College,  the  terms  of  the  transfer  providing  that  the 
work  should  be  conducted  by  a  Board  of  Trustees  to 
consist  of  thirteen  members,  one  to  be  appointed  by 
each  of  the  six  missionary  organizations  previously 
maintaining  it,  and  seven  by  the  China  Medical  Board. 
The  definite  aim  of  the  College  is  research  work  carried 
on  under  the  best  possible  conditions,  as  well  as  the 
training  of  men  who  shall  be  specialists  in  particular 
branches.  One  such  institution  can  serve  the  whole  of 
China.  Where  climatic  conditions  in  other  portions  of 
the  country  make  further  research  necessary,  the  College 
is  quick  to  co-operate  with  medical  workers  already 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


125 


in  the  district.1  For  further  information  regarding  this 
institution  the  reader  is  referred  to  Dr  Balme’s  book,2 
but  its  work  is  mentioned  here  because  a  certain 
amount  of  criticism  levelled  against  it  arises  from  a 
misunderstanding  of  its  main  objective.  Up  to  the 
present,  sixty  per  cent  of  its  students  have  been  drawn 
from  mission  schools  in  China.  When  to  this  fact  is 
added  the  fine  Christian  character  of  so  many  of  its  staff 
— a  staff  selected  for  their  outstanding  professional  qualifi¬ 
cations — the  Church  may  well  be  thankful  that  the  future 
medical  specialists  of  China  are  receiving  their  training 
in  such  an  environment. 

The  question  of  model  hospitals  inevitably  anticipates 
in  some  degree  our  third  section,  which  deals  mainly 
with  Christian  medical  education  in  China. 

Reproductive  Work 

We  need  to  glance  here  at  the  question  of  missionary 
medical  schools  :  the  training  of  Chinese  men  and  women 
to  be  the  future  medical  faculty  of  their  country.  The 
importance  of  this  hardly  needs  emphasizing,  and  in  any 
case  space  forbids.  A  full  treatment  of  the  subject 
has  been  given  by  Dr  Balme  ; 3  here  we  refer  only  to 
the  three  types  of  medical  men  thus  far  produced. 

(i)  The  Chinese  assistant  in  a  small  country  hospital, 
with  a  natural  bent  for  surgery  but  without  any  detailed 
training  in  theory,  learns  daily  from  the  simple  ex- 

1  As  an  instance  of  this,  since  the  above  was  written  the  head  of  one 
Department  has  left  Peking  for  a  period  of  investigation  in  Hunan, 
in  order  to  reinforce  the  researches  made  there  by  the  Yale  Medical 
Mission. 

*  China  and  Modern  Medicine,  by  Harold  Balme,  F.R.C.S.  (Chapters 
V  and  VII). 

8  Ibid. 


126 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


planations  given  him  by  his  chief,  the  why  and  wherefore 
of  certain  operations,  and  the  reasons  underlying  the 
treatment  of  the  patient  both  before  and  after  the 
operation.  Gradually,  and  as  far  as  is  consistent  with 
the  patients’  safety,  he  is  shown  how  to  do  operations 
himself.  After  some  years  in  the  company  of  a  practis¬ 
ing  surgeon  who  has  the  gift  of  inspiring  confidence, 
obedience,  loyalty  and  courage  in  his  assistant,  such  a 
man  can  himself  become  a  really  valuable  surgeon. 
There  are  cases  to-day  of  country  hospitals  carried  on 
for  years  in  the  absence  of  a  foreign  medical  by  these 
loyal,  teachable  Chinese  assistants. 

(2)  Next  comes  the  group  who  as  students  went  to 
Dr  A.  for  one  subject  and  who,  whilst  acting  as  assistants 
in  his  hospital,  went  through  certain  stages  of  practical 
work — for  example,  as  ward  dressers,  until  they  qualified 
in  their  subject.  The  next  year  they  were  to  be  found 
with  Dr  B.  of  the  same  or  a  co-operating  mission  in 
another  city,  taking  a  couple  of  subjects,  still  doing 
practical  work  (possibly  in  the  dispensary)  until  they 
were  further  qualified.  And  so  on  under  Drs  C.  and  D. 
until  they  finished  their  course.  These  peripatetic 
schools,  which  were  all  that  were  possible  in  the  early 
years,  have  turned  out  some  useful  men,  who  have  done 
good  work,  and  have  led  up  to 

(3)  The  modern  missionary  medical  school  and  hospital 
with  the  wonderful  staff  and  full  equipment  such  as  is 
found  at  such  places  as  Chengtu,  Tsinan,  and  Peking. 
For  detailed  description  of  this  work  we  have  here  no 
space,  but  for  the  spirit  which  animates  the  staff  in 
these  schools  one  cannot  be  sufficiently  thankful ;  and 
that  this  same  spirit  of  Christian  devotion  may  ever 
be  there  should  be  our  prayer. 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  HEALER 


127 


By  the  general  consent  of  missions  in  China,  the 
nearest  approach  to  the  ideal  in  this  way  of  training 
men  to  act  as  general  practitioners  amongst  their  own 
countrymen  is  that  found  at  the  medical  school  of  the 
Shantung  Christian  University  in  Tsinan,  which  re¬ 
presents  ten  missions,  three  nationalities,  and  has  up 
to  the  present  turned  out  one  hundred  and  sixty-five 
qualified  practitioners.  In  the  medical  schools,  as  in  all 
others,  it  is  the  personal  factor  which  is  supreme.  No 
Christian  school  of  medicine  can  succeed  unless  it  have, 
as  a  gift  from  God,  men  of  exceptional  gifts,  deep  spiritual 
convictions,  and  tried  Christian  character ;  and  for  an 
intelligent  idea  of  the  life  of  such  a  school,  nothing  is 
more  to  the  purpose  than  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the  hidden 
forces  which  dominate  the  lives  of  its  leading  men. 

The  work  done  in  Bible  classes  in  the  Christian 
medical  schools  of  China  is  of  great  importance.  Gener¬ 
ally  speaking,  such  classes  appeal  more  to  the  students 
than  do  the  college  chapel  services  or  ordinary  church 
attendance.1  In  one  school  the  medical  men,  not 
content  with  attending  the  voluntary  Bible  classes 
arranged  for  them  in  their  own  college,  have  themselves 
gone  into  the  Government  colleges  in  the  city  and  are 
teaching  groups  of  non-Christian  students  in  the  Bible 
classes  which  they  have  organized. 

Here  again  we  have  the  acid  test  of  missionary  work  : 
"  Does  it  evolve  the  type  which  can  reproduce  itself  ?  ” 

Some  months  ago  a  doctor  touring  in  Shantung  had 
been  looking  up  former  students  of  the  Christian  Uni- 

1  Possibly  because  the  former  is  in  a  form  familiar  to  the  student, 
while  the  Church  services  which  appeal  so  much  to  us  in  the  West 
have  as  their  reinforcement  a  long  tradition  of  which  we  are  scarcely 
conscious. 


128 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


versity,  and  in  his  journey  came  across  one  of  their 
number.  Nothing  could  more  cheer  believers  in  medical 
missions  than  his  description  of  that  student’s  life  and 
work  : 

“  One  of  our  old  medical  graduates,  Chen  Hsioh-ling, 
who  after  leaving  our  medical  school  acted  as  assistant 
to  Dr  Hills  at  Temple  Hill  Hospital  for  some  years, 
has  now  set  up  in  practice  for  himself  in  Chefoo,  and 
is  doing  a  splendid  piece  of  work.  In  addition  to  a 
beautiful  little  foreign  house  which  he  has  built  for  his 
own  residence,  and  which  is  kept  spotlessly  clean,  he 
has  opened  a  dispensary  and  nursing  home  for  private 
patients  in  the  city,  in  connection  with  which  he  has 
a  little  preaching  hall,  and  employs  his  own  evangelist 
to  talk  to  the  various  patients  who  seek  his  aid.  He 
has  a  fine  reputation,  not  only  as  a  thoroughly  good 
doctor,  but  as  an  outstanding  Christian  man.” 

To  send  forth  China’s  sons  and  daughters  to  their 
own  people  with  this  gift  of  healing  in  their  hands,  and 
with  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  their  hearts,  is  the  call  which 
comes  to  the  Church  to-day. 


CHAPTER  VII 


"  THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN  ” 

We  come  now  to  the  section  which  needs  a  volume  to 
itself :  the  Chinese  Christian  Church — the  Church  which 
one  prays  and  hopes  may  prove  the  home  of  the  Spirit, 
and  to  which  all  that  is  best  in  Chinese  life  and 
thought  may  come  to  find  its  rest,  its  renewal,  and  its 
inspiration. 

The  Church  of  China  is  at  once  the  goal  and  the 
justification  of  Christian  Missions  in  that  country.  It  is 
a  significant  fact  that  during  the  last  few  weeks 1  a  new 
phrase  has  been  going  round  the  political  circles  in 
Peking,  viz. :  “  Yesu  P*ai.”  “  P’ai  ”  is  the  ordinary  term 
for  any  political  party ;  “  Yesu  ”  is  the  Chinese  pro¬ 
nunciation  of  “  Jesus.”  This  “  Christian  Party  ”  is  not 
identical  with  the  “  Returned  Student  ”  or  “  Foreign 
Educated  ”  class,  though  its  members  are  almost  all 
men  with  Western  training.  It  includes  those  who  are 
not  only  friendly  to  Christianity  but  are  definitely  and 
publicly  associated  with  it.  The  significance  here  is  not 
of  the  moral  superiority  of  the  Christian  party  to  the 
others,  but  that  the  time  should  have  come  when  such 
a  party  can  be  taken  as  one  of  the  regular  forces  to  be 
reckoned  with  in  the  national  life,  and  its  chief  interest 
for  us  is  in  indicating  the  proportions  to  which  the 
Church  has  grown.  The  actual  figures  given  in  the 


1  November  1922. 


129 


I 


130 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Survey 1  returns  are  806,926,  as  the  total  Christian 
constituency  (exclusive  of  the  Roman  and  Greek  com¬ 
munions),  of  which  the  Methodist  Church  contributes 
about  one  quarter,  and  the  Presbyterian  another  quarter. 


The  figures  in  1920  were  : — 

Methodist  .....  199,081 

Presbyterian  ....  186,378 

Various  denominations  embraced 

in  the  China  Inland  Mission  2  110,356 

Baptist  .....  61,211 

Congregationalist  ....  56,929 

Lutheran  .....  55,104 

Anglican  .....  47,852 

Four  other  societies  .  .  .  90,015 


806,926 

This  figure  includes  the  number  of  those  who  are 
under  instruction  and  preparing  for  baptism.  The 
number  of  communicants  or  full  members  is  366,524. 

According  to  W.  Sheldon  Ridge,  the  geographer  whose 
opening  section  of  this  Survey  is  one  of  its  most  valuable 
features,  in  1920  the  population  of  China,  including 
Mongolia,  Chinese  Turkestan,  Tibet,  and  Kokonor,  was 
between  425  and  430  millions.  The  Protestant  Christians 
therefore  number  less  than  one  in  1000  of  the  whole 
population.  Adding  to  these  the  Roman  Catholic  com- 

1  The  Christian  Occupation  of  China,  p.  i,  especially  footnotes  i  to  7. 
The  scientific  data  on  which  these  figures  are  based  are  too  technical 
to  be  given  here. 

%  This  Mission  draws  its  members  from  all  the  evangelical  sections  of 
the  Church,  and  if  its  numbers  were  divided  between  the  various 
denominations  represented  by  its  personnel,  the  figures  under  Methodists, 
etc.,  would  have  to  be  increased  considerably. 


“THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN” 


131 


municants— 1,971,189— and  the  6,249  of  the  Orthodox 
Greek  Church,  we  get  one  Christian  amongst  187 
non-Christian  Chinese. 

The  term  “  Chinese  Christian  Church  ”  needs,  however 
other  interpretation  than  that  of  statistics.  It  has  been 
frequently  used  in  this  book ;  the  reader  of  missionary 
literature  constantly  meets  it.  Does  it  convey  any 
vivid  idea  ?  Leaving  the  realm  of  ecclesiastical  policies 
and  missionary  programmes,  what  do  we  mean  by  “  The 
Chinese  Church  "  ?  Or  better  still,  let  us  ask,  “  What 
does  this  Church  mean  to  its  own  members  ?  ” 

A  traveller  in  some  central  China  Province  off  the 
main  track  of  railway  and  steamer  communications  may 
one  day  reach  the  village,  say,  of  “  Wang  Chia  Tsun 
the  village  of  the  Wang  family.  If  he  were  told  that 
this  was  a  Christian  village  and  asked  if  he  could  notice 
in  it  anything  distinctive,  he  might  at  first  be  puzzled 
For  days  he  has  been  in  the  heart  of  China  away  from 
anything  foreign,  anything  missionary.  The  “mission¬ 
ary  compound,”  about  which  such  conflicting  statements 
at  times  appear,  is  far  away.  The  village  seems  much 
the  same  as  other  villages— mud-walled  houses  with 
straw  thatch  or  heavy  tiling,  the  threshing  floor,  the 
well,  the  babies,  the  flies,  the  dogs.  If  he  is  observant 
however,  he  will  remember  that  as  he  came  through 
the  village  gateway  presuming  the  village  possesses  the 

much  desired  wall  which  protects  it  from  bandits _ he 

saw  no  gaudily  painted  idol  shrine  above  the  gate  no 
fearsomely  posturing  “  demon  ”  to  frighten  away’  ill- 
influence,  no  screen  to  stop  the  spirits  of  wind  and  water, 
which  might  have  evil  designs  upon  the  village.  He 
sees  neither  temple  nor  theatre ;  there  is  no  idol  niche 
above  the  village  well.  If  the  foreigner  is  an  artist, 


132 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


or  interested  in  folk-lore,  or  a  man  who  considers  that 
religion’s  main  virtue  is  that  it  puts  some  colour  into 
the  otherwise  drab  life  of  the  masses,  he  may  think  it 
a  pity  that  these  gaily  painted  figures  should  be  missing 
from  the  village,  and  that  the  missionary  had  not  left 
the  people  happy  with  a  religion  which  “  suited  them.” 
If  he  is  not  only  tolerant  but  fair-minded,  he  will  go  on 
to  enquire  whether  the  Christian  faith,  which  has  caused 
these  omissions  in  the  village  life,  has  added  anything 
to  the  total  account.  The  answer  to  such  an  enquiry 
will  be  found  in  the  church  and  school  of  the  village. 
These  will  be  housed  in  one  building,  modest  but  clean, 
and  brightened  up  by  the  Christians  in  various  ways. 
The  decorativeness  of  the  Chinese  written  character 
helps  to  make  gay  any  building  which  has  texts 
hung  about  its  walls  ;  and  the  pictures  supplied  to-day 
by  the  Chinese  Sunday-school  central  organizations  are 
thoroughly  Chinese  in  style  and  often  delightful.  It  is 
in  this  building  that  much  of  the  colour  and  music  of 
the  village  life  centres.  A  school  by  day,  a  place  of 
prayer  in  the  evening,  a  meeting  place  for  God’s  people 
on  the  Sunday — this  little  building  is  seldom  silent.  We 
have  seen  already  the  place  of  the  Christian  schoolmaster 
in  its  activities.1  In  many  cases,  however,  the  presence 
of  the  school-church  building  will  be  due  to  the 
faith  of  some  humble  villager,  whose  only  literacy  has 
been  gained  through  his  or  her  Christian  faith.  For 
example,  a  woman  of  natural  ability  and  previously  un¬ 
suspected  power  of  leadership,  who  has  during  a  long 
stay  in  a  Christian  hospital  found  Christ  as  her  personal 
Saviour,  and  has  there  learnt  to  spell  her  way  through 
the  New  Testament,  to  master  a  catechism,  and  to  sing 

1  In  Chapter  V. 


“THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN” 


183 


a  few  hymns,  returns  home  and  has  the  courage  to 
confess  Christ  there.  She  describes  the  joys  of  the 
worship  she  knew  in  the  hospital  services ;  she  teaches 
one  and  another  the  Lord’s  Prayer,  a  verse  or  two  of  a 
hymn ;  she  talks  of  her  Lord’s  saving  power,  until 
desire  stirs  in  her  neighbours’  minds  to  take  part  in  some 
such  service.  The  Christian  woman  sends  in  appeals  to 
her  hospital  evangelist  friends  or  to  the  Christians  in 
the  nearest  town  or  village,  pleading  that  some  one  will 
“  come  over  and  help  us.”  A  few  visits  from  a  man 
of  God  will  result  in  a  resolve  to  build  a  room  on  to 
some  convenient  house  in  the  village,  or  in  some  safe 
walled  compound,  and  this  room  is  set  aside  as  a  school- 
chapel. 

It  is  a  very  simple  meeting  that  is  held  here  on  the 
Sunday.  The  hymns  sung  are  confined  to  those  known 
by  “  the  congregation  ” — perhaps  four  hymns  in  all.  If 
a  visiting  preacher  is  able  to  sing  he  will  sometimes  spend 
an  hour  before  and  after  the  service  teaching  the  flock  a 
new  hymn  tune,  after  driving  the  words  of  one  verse  into 
their  memory.  He  will  be  able  to  take  nothing  for 
granted  in  his  reading  of  a  Scripture  lesson,  or  in  his 
exposition.  If  he  does  not  somehow  or  other  refer  to 
the  parables  of  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  St.  Luke’s  Gospel 1 
his  congregation  will  be  disappointed  ;  he  has  not  started 
them  off  from  a  place  where  they  feel  at  home.  He  must 
not  talk  glibly  of  "  Pharisees  ”  or  “  Caesar,”  or  “  Baptism  ” ; 
he  must  either  introduce  an  easily  understood  equivalent, 
or  explain  the  term  thoroughly — making  another  sermon 
of  the  explanation — or  leave  it  alone  entirely.  Often  he 
will  find  that  after  his  audience  has  listened  patiently  for 

1  The  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Sod  is  preached  in  China  more  than  any 
other  single  passage  of  Scripture. 


134 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


half  an  hour  their  real  enjoyment  begins  when,  at  the 
close  of  the  service,  they  can  ask  questions  about  points 
on  which  they  are  still  puzzled  in  some  previously  studied 
portion  of  Scripture.  It  is  often  advisable  to  give  up  the 
attempt  at  a  long  address,  using  a  question  and  answer 
class  instead.  And  the  preacher  must  be  prepared  to 
have  some  privileged  old  granny  shrill  out  personal 
questions  which  shock  his  modesty,  but  are  asked  in  all 
innocence  and  friendliness.  One  has  to  be  patient  also 
with  people  whose  powers  of  attending  to  abstract 
thinking  are  undeveloped,  who  have  had  little  practice 
in  digging  down  to  underlying  principles,  who  are  soon 
exhausted  in  listening  to  “  doctrine  ”  however  simply 
put  and  profusely  illustrated,  and  who  turn  with  relief 
to  personalities — the  amount  of  your  income,  the  age  of 
your  wife,  your  preferences  in  food,  and  so  on. 

Often  these  little  meeting  houses  have  no  outside 
visitor  for  weeks  to  bring  freshness  to  their  services.  The 
one  or  two  earnest  souls  among  the  congregation  give 
out  again  and  again  the  tale  of  their  Christian  experience, 
with  any  fresh  gleanings  they  may  have  gathered  from 
their  Scripture  reading  in  the  past  week.  It  is  remark¬ 
able  that  with  so  little  outside  help  they  remain  as 
faithful  as  they  do.  We  who  are  quick  to  complain  about 
the  dulness  of  our  home  Church  services  may  well  feel 
rebuked  by  the  faithfulness  of  these  Chinese  Christians. 

To  members  of  a  village  church  the  quarterly  or  half- 
yearly  meetings  of  their  Association  are  of  great  value. 
They  may  have  to  travel  thirty  miles  over  rough  roads 
to  reach  the  central  meeting  place.  They  have  to  sleep 
in  rough  fashion  on  floors  strewn  with  straw  whereon 
men  spread  their  quilts  in  one  room  or  outhouse  and 
the  women  and  children  in  another.  Hard-baked  bread 


“  THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN  ” 


135 


brought  from  their  own  houses,  helped  out  by  the 
barley  or  millet  broth  supplied  by  the  central  Church 
authorities,  forms  their  food.  And  for  three  days  they 
have  a  happy  time.  They  do  not  understand  all  that  is 
said  or  done  at  the  meetings,  but  they  realize  themselves 
as  part  of  a  great  assemblage  ;  they  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
Church  Catholic,  one  o’er  all  the  earth ;  they  experience 
the  spiritual  uplift  of  united  prayer,  and  of  a  mass  of 
joyous  praise  to  the  Most  High.  Between  the  meetings 
they  master  new  hymns,  get  a  stock  of  new  illustrations, 
learn  of  the  triumphs  and  the  difficulties  of  the  Church 
in  other  villages,  make  new  Christian  friendships.  Two 
services  at  these  gatherings  generally  stand  out  in  their 
memory  :  one  is  the  Baptism,  when  new  members  enter 
the  Church,  and  the  other  the  closing  service,  which  is 
a  celebration  of  the  Lord’s  Supper.  In  the  strength 
of  these  meetings  they  return  home  with  an  increased 
delight  in  Bible  study,  to  continue  their  Sunday  services 
and  the  daily  common  prayer.  And  all  their  outlook 
is  brightened  by  a  new  appreciation — an  appreciation  of 
"  The  Chinese  Christian  Church.” 

It  is  a  far  remove  from  such  humble  beginnings  to  the 
beautiful  church  buildings  of  a  great  capital ;  from  the 
simple  gatherings  at  which  members  spell  their  way 
slowly  through  a  Bible  story  to  a  great  congregation 
of  well-educated  people  following  sermons  preached  by 
such  men  as  the  Rev  Dr  Cheng  Ching-Yi  and  Dr  Chang 
Po-ling.  Yet  in  both  cases  it  is  the  vision  of  the  Church 
Universal  that  renews  the  courage  ;  it  is  the  vision  of  the 
risen  Head  of  the  Church  that  uplifts  the  heart. 

There  is  to-day  in  Peking  on  the  great  Hat  amen  Street 
a  church  built  entirely  by  the  Chinese  themselves,  with 
beautiful  appointments  and  a  good  supply  of  class-rooms 


136 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


and  church  offices,  with  a  well-trained  experienced  minister 
of  good  judgment  and  devout  spirit  in  charge.  Here  on 
Sunday  afternoons  during  the  year  1921-2  a  university 
service  was  held,  where  great  preaching  was  to  be  heard. 
In  such  a  church  no  Chinese  official  or  scholar  need  feel 
that  he  is  sitting  at  the  feet  of  “  the  foreigner/' 

In  Canton,  in  a  similar  church,  there  were  in  1921  five 
ministers  of  the  South  China  Government  in  membership. 
In  Shanghai,  the  late  founder  and  proprietor  of  the  great 
“  Commercial  Press  ”  of  China  was  a  humble,  devout 
member  of  the  Chinese  Church.  While  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  the  membership  is  still  found  amongst  the 
small  farmer  and  artisan  class,  there  are  to-day  in  a  few 
great  centres  churches  to  which,  on  account  of  their 
beauty  of  worship,  intellectual  strength,  and  spiritual 
power,  clear  minds  and  devout  hearts  in  China  can  turn 
for  enlightenment  and  peace. 

Such  men  and  women  will  not  be  content  merely  to 
receive  from  the  Church  ;  they  will  bring  to  her  gifts  of 
scholarship,  of  leadership,  and  treasures  of  art  and  music. 
As  one  instance  of  this  we  take  the  question  of  hymnology. 
There  are  some  happy  translations  of  Western  hymns  in 
present  use,  and  some  delightful  tunes,  but  unfortunately 
there  are  many  “  hymns  ”  translated  which  in  their 
English  original  were  dreadful  productions,  and  which  in 
their  Chinese  dress  are  even  worse.  The  Church  in  all 
countries  and  ages  has  had  to  suffer  similar  afflictions 
which  pass  away,  leaving  her  with  the  permanent  riches 
of  a  noble  praise  service.  But  the  best  of  the  present 
Chinese  hymnary  does  not  meet  the  needs  of  the  Church. 
That  need  can  only  be  met  by  Chinese  Christian  poets. 
Happily  these  are  beginning  to  write.  And  the  musicians 
are  following.  In  a  few  years  we  ought  to  see  a  collection 


“THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN ” 


137 


of  hymns,  set  to  beautiful  music,  which  express  Christian 
aspiration  and  devotion  in  such  wise  that  no  sense  of 
foreignness  will  cling  to  them.  Strange  they  will  be, 
since  the  Christian  Church  is  itself  a  pilgrim  body,  but 
they  will  not  be  “  foreign/’  and  they  will  not  jar  on  the 
susceptibilities  of  Chinese  who  know  what  poetry  and 
devotion  are. 

Similarly,  no  satisfactory  liturgical  service  can  be 
looked  for  until  it  be  composed  by  Chinese  saints. 
Chinese  Christians  who  have  found  in  the  beautiful 
Anglican  service  in  America  and  Britain  a  means  of 
expression  for  their  deepest  religious  feelings,  come  back 
to  their  own  country  and  are  sorely  disappointed  by  the 
many  infelicities  they  find  in  the  Chinese  Prayer  Book ; 
it  is  all  so  different  from  what  they  knew  abroad.  No 
one  is  to  blame.  The  requirements  necessary  for  a 
Chinese  equivalent  to  the  stately  beauty  of  the  English 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  can  only  be  met  by  a  Chinese 
scholar  who  can  bring  to  his  task  the  treasures  of  a 
devotional  spirit.  He  must  be  a  man  whose  mind  is 
soaked  in  the  history  of  the  Church  Catholic,  and  who 
is  also  a  scribe  well  instructed  in  his  own  country’s 
language  and  literature.  And  in  the  day  when  these 
treasures  of  liturgy  and  hymnology  shall  adorn  the 
worship  of  the  Chinese  Church,  her  children  will  not  be 
unmindful  of  the  debt  they  owe  to  those  who  gave  them 
the  early  translations  from  the  West,  which  were  the 
prelude  to  the  full  and  rich  music  of  her  later  worship. 

Such  a  Church,  alive  to  the  day’s  needs,  in  sympathy 
with  the  nation’s  aspirations,  rich  in  men  and  women 
of  varied  powers,  and  above  all  drawing  deeply  from  the 
wells  of  Salvation — such  a  Church  is  big  enough  to  be 
the  home  of  all  good  men  in  China. 


138 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


The  Church  and  National  Life 

In  Chapter  III  we  considered  the  economic  difficulties 
with  which  China  is  faced.  Here  we  have  to  ask  our¬ 
selves,  “  What  is  the  contribution  of  the  Church  to  this 
question  ?  ”  Can  she  generate  the  spirit  which  patiently 
seeks  the  just  method  of  reconciling  differences  ?  The 
clash  of  war,  whether  between  nations  or  between  classes, 
marking  the  cessation  of  such  patience,  has  brought 
disaster.  Can  the  Church  in  China  so  produce  the  Christ- 
spirit  that  counsels  of  ruthlessness  and  recklessness  may 
be  first  checked  and  finally  discarded  ?  We  believe  she 
can.  It  is  easy  to  remember  the  failures  of  Christianity  ; 
their  noise  is  spread  abroad.  But  its  successes  are 
also  many ;  they  are  spreading  from  the  village  councils 
of  Christian  peasant  groups  into  the  cities,  where  the 
Church  is  respected  and  her  leaders  recognized  as  men 
of  character.  Bribery  and  corruption  have  made  it 
difficult  for  Christian  men  to  be  elected  to  the  Chinese 
Parliament  in  the  past,  but  the  people  are  so  heartily 
ashamed  of  the  present  parliamentarians  who  are  making 
it  impossible  for  men  of  character  to  hold  office  in  the 
Cabinet 1  that,  in  spite  of  the  power  of  the  military  and 
political  machine,  we  may  expect  to  see  in  the  next 

1  In  November  1922  Mr  Lo  Wen-kan,  the  Minister  of  Finance,  was 
bundled  into  prison,  with  no  pretence  of  legality,  upon  a  trumped-up 
charge  of  receiving  bribes  in  connection  with  an  Italian  loan.  The 
Speaker  and  Vice-Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  misused  the 
House’s  seal  for  the  purpose  of  impeachment,  and  so  imposed  upon  an 
honest  but  bewildered  President  who  gave  verbal  order  for  the  arrest 
to  the  Peking  Chief  of  Police.  Parliament  had  not  been  consulted. 
Yet  so  much  was  this  body  in  the  pay  of  Marshal  Ts’ao  Kun,  the  Chihli 
Military  Governor,  who  was  then  aiming  at  the  Presidency,  that  it 
confirmed  this  utterly  illegal  action — even  after  the  charge  of  bribery 
was  disproved  in  to  to — by  an  overwhelming  majority.  Mr  Lo  is  an 


“ THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN” 


139 


Parliament  a  small  group  of  independent  members 
elected  by  the  people.  And  in  this  group  it  is  fairly 
certain  that  the  Christian  Church  will  be  represented. 
The  arrival  of  such  a  group  should  mark  a  great 
advance  in  the  political  regeneration  of  the  country.  The 
contribution  of  Christian  civilization — not  occidental  nor 
oriental,  but  Christian — to  China's  need  will  then  be 
clearly  seen. 

It  was  in  May  1922  at  Shanghai  that  the  National 
Christian  Council  of  China  came  to  birth.  The  signi¬ 
ficance  of  this  event  is  one  of  the  greatest  landmarks 
in  the  nineteen  centuries  since  Pentecost.  The  Chinese 
Christian  Council  is  not  a  Church  :  its  members  are 
the  representatives  of  such  Churches  as  the  Congre¬ 
gational,  the  Presbyterian,  the  Anglican,  the  Baptist, 
and  other  communions  in  China.  But  the  birth  of 
one  united  Chinese  Christian  Church  is  well  within  the 
possibilities  of  this  generation.  Already  we  have  the 
members  of  the  National  Christian  Council  sitting  as 
representatives  of  the  Chinese  Churches,  not  as  delegates 
of  the  missionary  societies.  This  applies  to  the  foreigners 
as  well  as  to  the  Chinese  members  of  the  Council.  The 
present  membership  is  fifty  per  cent  Chinese  and  fifty 
per  cent  foreign,  a  useful  and  happy  arrangement  in 
the  period  when  much  elaborate,  slowly-built  organiza¬ 
tion  (including  heavy  financial  undertakings  and  con¬ 
siderable  property)  is  being  gradually  transferred  from 
the  missions  to  the  Chinese  Church  as  the  strength  of 
the  latter  proves  equal  to  the  burden.  But  from  this 

Oxford  man  ;  quiet,  unassuming,  and  genuinely  patriotic.  His  very 
ability  and  the  fact  of  his  having  been  trained  abroad  made  him  an 
object  of  attack  by  the  militarists,  though  the  main  reason  of  the 
action  was  to  bring  about  the  fall  of  the  Wang  Chung-hwei  Cabinet,  the 
best  that  has  yet  been  seen  in  the  Republic. 


140 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


time  forth  we  may  expect  to  see  the  Chinese  membership 
increase  and  the  foreign  decrease. 

The  National  Christian  Council  resulted  from  the  great 
National  Christian  Conference  held  in  Shanghai.  This  was 
the  first  Christian  Conference  in  China  to  which  the 
Chinese  members  came  as  the  delegated  representatives  of 
their  own  communions,  and  came  also  in  equal  numbers 
to  the  missionary  representatives.  The  leadership  of  the 
whole  Conference  was  in  Chinese  hands.  Dr  Cheng 
Ching-yi 1  acted  as  chairman,  and  that  this  servant  of 
God  was  specially  endued  with  Divine  unction  for  his 
task  from  his  first  assumption  of  office,  was  clear  to 
each  member  of  the  Conference.  From  the  chairman 
of  the  whole  Conference  to  the  chairman  of  the 
least  sub-committee,  the  leadership  was  almost  entirely 
Chinese,  while  of  the  five  main  Commissions  reporting 
to  the  Conference,  the  work  of  the  most  important — that 
relating  to  the  Message  of  the  Church — was  prepared 
entirely  by  Chinese  members. 

To  appreciate  fully  the  significance  of  this  Conference 
one  needs  to  remember  that  it  was  an  event  rather  than 
a  Conference.  As  a  conference,  in  the  strict  meaning 
of  the  term,  it  was  a  failure,  as  any  gathering  of  a 
thousand  people  in  a  great  hall  is  bound  to  be.  In  such 
circumstances  it  is  impossible  to  "  confer.”  But  as  an 
event  it  was  truly  epoch-making.  Immature  as  the 

1  Dr  Cheng  Ching-yi  is  an  ordained  pastor  in  the  Congregational 
Church.  He  was  for  many  years  in  the  pastoral  office  in  Peking.  He 
made  a  deep  impression  by  his  contributions  at  the  World  Missionary 
Conference  in  Edinburgh  in  1910.  He  had  a  course  of  study  in  the 
United  States  and  in  England,  and  has  been  for  some  years  one  of  the 
main  leaders  of  the  China  Continuation  Committee,  which  conserved 
the  results  of  the  Christian  Conference  in  Shanghai  in  1911.  The 
National  Christian  Council  has  taken  over  the  work  of  this  China 
Continuation  Committee. 


“  THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN  ” 


141 


National  Christian  Council  may  be  in  some  of  its  mani¬ 
festations,  it  is  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an  inward 
and  spiritual  grace ;  it  is  the  expression  of  a  national 
Christian  consciousness  come  to  birth.  During  the 
sessions  of  the  Conference  many  of  its  members  grasped 
the  fact  that  potentially  they,  and  not  the  missionaries, 
were  the  pivotal  people.  Other  members  who  failed 
to  grasp  the  full  significance  of  the  Conference  at  the 
time  will  do  so  when  they  look  back  upon  it  later.  They 
will  see  that  it  was  during  those  days  that  the  mission¬ 
aries  parted  with  their  heritage  of  leadership ;  parted 
with  it  in  a  great  act  of  Christian  faith  and  love.  The 
question  now  before  the  Church  of  Christ  is,  “  Can  the 
Chinese  Church  enter  into  this  heritage  fully  and  develop 
truly  all  its  possibilities  ?  ”  Only  as  she  can  do  this 
is  the  century  of  Christian  missionary  enterprise  in  that 
country  justified.  The  sending  to  China  of  thousands  of 
Christian  missionaries  from  abroad  for  the  preaching  of 
the  Gospel  is  in  the  main  a  failure  if  it  does  not,  in 
addition  to  the  saving  of  individual  souls,  result  in  a 
type  of  Chinese  Christian  which  can  reproduce  itself. 
When  the  Lord  God  planted  His  Garden  it  was  with 
“  the  tree  yielding  fruit,  whose  seed  was  in  itself,  after  his 
kind,”  and  if  the  Spirit  of  Christ  has  planted  His  Church 
in  China  it  is  because  the  type  of  Christian  found  in  that 
Church  has  a  like  power  to  reproduce  new  individuals 
"  after  its  kind.”  It  is  for  the  sake  of  such  a  consummation 
that  the  Church  makes  known  her  request  to  her  Lord  that 
He  will  grant  her  the  piety,  the  spiritual  understanding, 
the  gifts  of  leadership,  and  the  teaching  which  she  needs, 
as  well  as  the  power  to  marshal  the  varied  forces  of  the 
Church  for  the  accomplishment  of  one  common  purpose. 

It  is  as  exemplifying  this  reproduction  of  a  type  that 


142 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


the  life  and  work  of  such  a  man  as  Feng  Yii-hsiang, 
“  the  Christian  General,”  is  of  such  immense  importance. 
General  Feng  is  a  portent  not  only  because  of  the  high 
position  which  he  holds  and  the  exceptional  opportunities 
before  him  as  a  Christian  evangelist  to-day,  but  because 
from  his  earliest  days  as  a  Christian  he  has  exhibited 
the  power  of  applying  the  Christian  force  generated 
within  him  by  the  Holy  Ghost  to  the  production  of 
Christian  character  in  his  human  environment,  whether 
that  human  environment  be  composed  of  individuals  of 
a  low  or  a  high  degree  of  mental  development.  The 
illiterate  private  and  the  educated  officer  have  both 
been  infused  with  this  new  power.  Such  a  movement 
cannot  be  accounted  for  by  merely  quoting  such  proverbs 
as,  14  The  grass  blows  when  the  wind  blows  ” ;  in  other 
words,  that  it  represents  only  the  soldiers’  desire  to 
stand  well  in  the  General’s  eyes.  No  General  could 
impose  a  religious  or  political  theory  upon  such  a  large 
mass  of  men  in  the  Chinese  army  of  to-day  if  the  men 
were  not  themselves  in  favour  of  it.  In  no  country 
in  the  world  is  there  such  disregard  paid  by  the  army 
to  its  General’s  preferences.  Moreover,  Feng  Yii-hsiang 
has  never  had  the  money  to  buy  his  men’s  acquiescence  ; 
following  him  has  meant  until  quite  recently  the  poorest 
of  fare  and  the  scantiest  of  pay,  and  this  without 
opportunities  for  loot. 

That  this  same  power  of  perpetuating  “  life  ”  is  being 
displayed  to-day  in  a  very  different  human  environment 
is  plain  from  the  following  paragraph  from  the  Peking 
Press :  “On  January  14th,  thirty  men  met  at  the 
home  of  the  Rev  Lui  Fang,  a  minister  of  the  Methodist 
Church  in  Peking.  They  included  Dr  W.  W.  Yen 
[educated  in  U.S.A.  and  Germany,  ex-Minister  at  Berlin, 


“THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN” 


143 


ex-Foreign  Minister,  several  times  Acting  Premier] ; 
Dr  C.  T.  Wang  [a  son  of  the  manse,  educated  at  Yale 
University ;  acted  for  the  Chinese  Governor  when 
Tsingtau  was  returned  to  China  by  Japan] ;  Dr  Wang 
Chung-hui  [a  son  of  the  manse,  ex- Premier] ;  Mr  Chang 
Ying-hua  [educated  at  Manchester  Grammar  School  and 
University ;  ex-Director-General  of  the  Salt  Gabelle, 
acting  Finance  Minister] ;  Mr  Hsu  Chien  [Head  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Justice  in  the  Canton  Government] ; 
and  Dr  David  Yui  [General  Secretary  of  the  National 
Executive  of  the  Y.M.C.  A.  in  China,  and  People’s  Delegate 
to  the  Washington  Conference].  This  meeting  is  the  first 
of  a  series  which  it  is  proposed  to  hold  at  the  Rev  Lui 
Fang’s  home  every  Sunday  for  officials  in  the  Chinese 
Government  who  are  Christians.  It  is  emphasized  that 
no  politics  will  be  discussed  on  these  occasions,  which  are 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  helping  those  who  come  to  live  up 
to  the  Christian  teachings.  General  Feng  in  his  speech 
stressed  the  great  help  that  Christianity  had  been  to 
him  in  his  work  of  handling  men  and  giving  orders 
which  at  times  mean  life  or  death  to  them.  He  said 
that  his  interest  in  Christianity  has  been  growing  ever 
since  he  listened  to  an  address  made  by  Dr  John  R.  Mott 
in  the  first  year  of  the  Republic  and  which  was  translated 
by  Dr  C.  T.  Wang.  General  Feng  explained  that  his 
new  faith  helped  him  during  his  work  in  the  various 
Provinces  of  Hunan,  Shensi,  Szechwan  and  Honan  during 
the  past  ten  years  and  prevented  him  from  falling  into 
the  disastrous  errors  of  other  Chinese  Generals.  It  was 
at  the  suggestion  of  General  Feng  that  the  idea  of  holding 
weekly  meetings  for  the  Christian  officials  of  the  Chinese 
Government  and  their  families  was  adopted.”  1 
1  Peking  Daily  News,  29th  January  1923. 


144 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


For  two  classes  in  Britain  and  America  this  question 
of  the  power  to  reproduce  the  type  is  a  pressing  one  : 

1.  The  members  of  the  Christian  Church  who  are 
asked  to  support  missions.  They  have  the  right  to 
ask,  “  Does  this  effort  really  get  anywhere  ?  Appeals 
to  heroism,  pity,  sentiment  are  all  very  well  in  their 
way,  but  do  they  result  in  anything  permanent  ?  Is 
missionary  effort  to  go  on  indefinitely  as  an  exotic  in 
China  and  other  lands  ?  Can  we  look  with  any  reason¬ 
able  certainty  to  seeing  Christianity  in  the  near  future 
regarded  as  a  natural  feature  in  the  Chinese  mental 
landscape  ?  ”  If  the  answer  is  affirmative,  they  can 
consider  the  missionary  challenge  is  worth  taking  up ; 
if  not,  they  have  the  right  to  say  that  however  devoted 
missionary  agents  may  be  individually,  the  financial 
support  of  missions  means  money  poured  through  a 
sieve. 

2.  The  large  number  of  young  men  and  women  who  are 
faced  with  the  appeal  to  give  themselves  to  missionary 
work,  whether  they  are  already  students  in  college, 
or  are  contemplating  a  college  course  with  missionary 
work  as  their  definite  objective.  It  is  inevitable  that 
these  should  ask  themselves  this  question.  An  offer 
of  life-service  prompted  by  a  wave  of  emotion  which 
does  not  carry  with  it  some  relentless  thinking  is  not 
likely  to  stand  the  strain  to  which  the  missionary  worker 
is  subjected.  Candidates  for  missionary  service  may 
sometimes  be  startled  at  the  searching  enquiries  made, 
and  the  severe  tests  imposed,  by  the  missionary  societies. 
Yet  better  so  than  that  the  mission  field  should  be 
marred  by  the  broken  lives  of  men  who  ought  never  to 
have  been  sent  out,  whether  because  of  insufficient  equip¬ 
ment,  or  some  weak  strain  in  their  make-up,  or  because 


“  THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN  ” 


145 


they  had  mistaken  a  transient,  unprobed  enthusiasm 
for  a  genuine  vocation.  Such  a  genuine  vocation  for 
missionary  service  carries  with  it  the  question  :  “  Will 
the  work  be  productive  ?  Will  it  result  in  a  type  which 
will  perpetuate  itself  ?  ”  If  the  answer  here  is  "  No/’ 
then  the  further  questions  will  inevitably  follow  :  “  Why 
go  to  the  mission  field  ?  If  it  is  to  do  a  work  strictly 
confined  to  the  saving  of  individual  souls,  why  go  abroad  ? 
Are  there  not  plenty  of  unsaved  in  America  and  Britain  ?  ” 
Such  objections  to  missionary  work  are  known  only  too 
well  to  every  missionary,  and  they  come  from  none 
more  frequently  than  from  his  own  friends  who  begrudge 
his  leaving  a  sphere  at  home  in  which  his  usefulness 
has  been  proved. 

The  real  answer  to  this  enquiry  is  one  which  has  only 
gradually  appeared  as  work  in  the  mission  field  has 
developed.  The  missionary  whose  work  has  been  pro¬ 
viding  that  answer  may  himself  not  realize  clearly 
what  is  the  “  end  ”  which  his  efforts  serve.  What 
missionary  effort  has  struggled  after,  whether  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  has  been  the  production,  in  the  country 
to  which  it  has  gone,  of  a  type  of  life  which  should  be 
able  to  reproduce  itself.1  That  type  is  already  native 
to  the  life  of  Britain  and  America  ;  it  goes  on  perpetuat¬ 
ing  itself  just  as  the  national  life  does.  Can  it  be 
produced  in  India,  China  and  other  mission  fields  ?  If 
we  are  clear  that  it  cannot,  then  our  appeal  is  shifted 

1  It  is  clearly  understood,  of  course,  that  spiritual  life  comes  from  a 
spiritual  source,  that  the  Christian  lives  reproduced  by  the  type  are 
individually  “  born  of  the  Spirit.”  It  is  as  that  truth  is  fully  grasped, 
and  as  the  ability  to  meet  adequately  the  demands  made  upon  the 
Christian  community  to  propagate  that  truth  is  manifested,  that  we 
see  the  arrival  of  the  desired  type.  Only  with  its  arrival  can  we  hope 
to  see  an  indigenous  Church  in  China  or  other  mission  fields. 

K 


t 


146 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


from  the  ground  of  the  reasonable  to  one  which  is 
frankly  heroic  but  sentimental.  It  means  that  we  are 
pleading  for  help  for  the  individual  simply,  for  a  cause 
which  has  no  hope  of  ultimate  success  in  the  regeneration 
of  the  community.  To  ask  men  and  women  who  are 
successfully  working  at  home  to  go  abroad  with  such 
an  end  in  view  is  an  onerous  responsibility.  But  if 
we  are  sure  that  the  Christian  type  referred  to  above 
can  be  produced  in  China,  then  there  is  no  hesitation 
in  asking  any  worker  to  go  abroad,  since  any  “  loss  ” 
in  his  life  will  be  abundantly  compensated  by  the 
resultant  “  gain  ”  in  the  life  of  the  Christian  com¬ 
munity.  That  a  seed  should  fall  into  the  ground  and 
die  in  such  a  case  may  or  may  not  be  “  heroic  ”  ; 
that  is  a  very  secondary  question ;  the  all-important 
thing  is  that  it  is  reasonable.  It  is  in  the  full  con¬ 
viction  that  such  a  reasonable  service  is  open  to  them 
that  the  writer  urges  the  claims  of  missionary  work 
upon  the  young  men  and  women  of  the  homelands 
to-day. 

In  considering  the  Chinese  Church  there  is  one  question 
which,  in  China  as  elsewhere,  exercises  the  hearts  of 
Christ’s  followers  :  the  question  of  the  divergences  in 
Church  polity,  in  modes  of  worship,  and  in  credal  state¬ 
ment  to  be  found  in  her  ranks. 

One  needs  here  to  keep  close  to  existing  facts  and 
the  actual  conditions  under  which  they  developed. 
Evangelical  Christianity  has  made  its  way  in  China 
through  the  varied  channels  provided  by  the  missionary 
societies  representing  different  branches  of  the  Western 
Church,  or — as  in  the  case  of  the  China  Inland  Mission — 
representing  a  particular  school  of  thought  found  in 
many  of  such  branches.  In  the  early  years  this  meant 


“  THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN  ” 


147 


a  certain  amount  of  overlapping,  and  it  still  means 
occasional  bewilderment  in  the  minds  of  the  Chinese, 
though  this  difficulty  disappears  in  areas  where  a  work¬ 
ing  arrangement  exists  by  means  of  which  members  of 
one  communion  who  move  into  a  district  where  another 
communion  is  at  work,  can  be  received  as  full  members 
with  participation  in  the  Sacrament.  Against  these 
losses  has  to  be  set  the  gain  experienced  in  the  early 
years  through  getting  to  work  quickly,  the  impetus  of 
a  sharply  defined  policy,  and  the  warmth  and  confidence 
which  came  to  the  missionaries  who  felt  that  they  were 
the  representatives  of  a  denominational  Church  which 
they  loved,  which  they  knew  intimately,  and  whose 
leaders  were  their  personal  friends.  If  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century  weary  years  had  had  to  be  spent 
in  conferences,  and  upon  schemes  of  united  approach, 
much  of  the  early  enthusiasm  might  have  disappeared 
before  a  missionary  ever  reached  any  particular  field 
in  China. 

Another  gain  undoubtedly  was  that  the  variety 
secured  in  the  early  appeals  through  denominational 
differences  corresponded  roughly  to  the  variety  in 
temperament,  training,  and  social  standing  among  the 
people  addressed.  For  example,  the  work  of  the 
American  Episcopal  Church,  which  found  a  noble  ex¬ 
pression  in  the  stately  worship  and  cultural  emphasis 
of  St  John’s  College,  Shanghai,  met  the  needs  of  a  certain 
temperament  and  a  certain  class,  while  the  broadcast 
evangelism  of  the  Scandinavian  Alliance  Mission,  appeal¬ 
ing  as  it  did  to  the  simple  emotions  of  illiterate  peasant 
groups — illiterate  in  the  beginning  of  the  work,  though 
rapidly  ceasing  to  be  so  after  contact  with  the  Church 
— met  the  needs  of  another  temperament  and  another 


148 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


class.  In  large  centres  there  is  no  need  to  fear 
wastage  or  overlapping  through  different  societies  being 
represented.  (In  Peking,  for  example,  every  branch  of 
the  Church  rejoices  in  the  advent  of  the  Salvation 
Army,  with  its  rich  experience,  its  devoted  staff,  its 
peculiar  appeal,  and  well-tried  methods).  A  close  friend 
of  the  writer  is  a  Chinese  gentleman  who  was  brought 
up  from  childhood  in  the  Church  connected  with  the 
American  Baptist  Mission  (South).  He  left  it  for  the 
Episcopalian  communion,  where  he  found  in  the  quiet 
dignity  of  a  liturgical  service  the  aid  he  sought  to 
Christian  worship.  In  his  case  there  was  no  question  of 
disloyalty  to  any  principle  ;  the  particular  issue  between 
infant  baptism  and  believer’s  baptism  had  no  interest 
for  him ;  he  was  concerned  only  that  Christ  might  be 
known  as  Saviour  and  Lord.  Surely  both  Baptists  and 
Episcopalians  can  return  thanks  that  for  such  a  man 
the  mode  of  worship  suited  to  his  temperament  was 
to  hand. 

In  connection  with  the  whole  question  of  reunion 
among  the  various  branches  of  the  Church  in  China, 
two  considerations  need  to  be  kept  in  mind.  First,  this 
question  will  be  settled  by  the  Chinese  Church  with 
*  little  reference  to  findings  in  the  European  and  American 

world,  and  for  reasons  that  do  not  necessarily  march 
parallel  with  those  that  appeal  in  any  Lambeth  or  other 
Conference.  And,  second,  the  constitution  of  the 
Christian  Council  of  China  points  the  way  to  a  possible 
united  Church  of  China.  In  other  words,  any  supreme 
council  of  that  Church  will  not  acknowledge  the  authority 
of,  or  be  synonymous  with,  any  one  of  its  constituent 
members  :  Presbyterian,  Episcopalian,  or  Congregational. 
If  within  a  wider  circle  freedom  can  be  found  for  each 


“  THE  HOME  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN  ” 


149 


of  these  ecclesiastical  forms  and  sanctions,  then  a  union 
can  be  achieved ;  otherwise  it  must  remain  a  dream 
only,  since  the  temperamental  differences  will  always 
remain.  Not  the  old  historical  divisions  of  the  Church 
will  trouble  Chinese  Christians,  but  those  in  human 
nature.  For  there  is  one  difference  which  appears  in 
every  phase  of  human  living  and  goes  by  many  names, 
but  which  we  may  roughly  describe  as  the  difference 
between  the  experiential  and  the  authoritative.  It 
appears  in  art  and  literature,  in  industry,  in  the  various 
professions,  and  in  politics  and  religion  ;  it  is  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  those  who.  are  only  satisfied  by  trying  a 
thing  for  themselves,  and  those  who  feel  assured  because 
they  know  it  on  authority.  The  difference  is  often  over¬ 
laid  by  the  dust  of  past  controversies ;  men  on  either 
side  often  borrow  so  much  from  their  opposites  that  there 
may  seem  no  real  distinction ;  but  the  difference  remains 
and  will  always  remain.  So  far  as  it  touches  religion 
it  means  that  we  shall  always  have  the  one  man 
who  stakes  all  on  the  fact  that  there  is  an  immediate 
access  to  God  for  every  child  of  man ;  and  the  other 
who  believes  that  Divine  Grace  is  made  safe  for  man¬ 
kind  because  Divine  Love  chose  an  infallible  channel 
for  its  transmission.  The  difference  need  not  trouble  us 
if  we  believe  in  God.  He  who  made  man,  knew  how  to 
suit  His  advent  to  the  necessities  of  the  human  heart. 
From  the  experience  in  Divine  Grace  gained  by  adapting 
her  message  to  these  two  temperaments  comes  the 
ability  of  the  Church  to  deal  with  the  difficulties,  and 
to  supply  the  needs,  of  any  soul  who  seeks  her  aid. 
Not  only  in  the  heaven  of  the  afterwards,  but  even  on 
the  earth  here  and  now,  the  Church  sees  the  way  of 
the  perfect  round ;  she  maintains  that  the  kingdom  of 


150 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


the  world  is  become  the  Kingdom  of  our  Lord,  and  of 
His  Christ. 

And  for  this  Church  in  China  we  seek  the  prayers  of 
all  who  love  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  sincerity  and  in 
truth. 


APPENDIX  A 


PLATFORM  OF  RENAISSANCE,  OR  NEW  INTEL¬ 
LECTUAL  MOVEMENT  IN  CHINA,  DRAWN  UP 
BY  ITS  PRINCIPAL  LEADERS 

Quoted  from  Peking  :  A  Social  Survey,  by  S.  D.  Gamble. 

I.  Aim  :  To  remake  civilization. 

Because  of  our  desire  to  remake  civilization  we  therefore 
should  emphasize  : — 

1.  Democracy. 

2.  Science. 

By  means  of  democracy  and  science  China  can  be  saved  and 
properly  controlled.  Moreover,  because  government,  morality, 
learning,  and  intellectual  life  are  in  a  very  decadent  condition, 
democracy  must  oppose  Confucianism,  ceremonialism,  the  old 
conservative  viewpoint  on  morality,  and  old  forms  of  Government. 

In  order  to  preserve  modern  science  we  must  stand  opposed 
to  former  technical  arts  and  ancient  religions. 

In  order  to' preserve  morality,  democracy,  and  science  we  must 
oppose  fixed  national  traditions  and  the  old  literary  style  of 
composition. 

II.  Attitude  :  The  critical  attitude. 

This  attitude  is  a  new  one.  Such  an  attitude  considers  and 
fixes  properly  all  values.  It  aims  at  the  “  transvaluation  of 
values." 

The  things  especially  emphasized  in  this  critical  attitude 
are  : — 

1.  In  regard  to  the  attitude  towards  customs,  the  question 

to  be  answered  is,  “Does  the  maintenance  of  this  custom 
have  value  for  society  ?  ”  (Valueless  customs  should  be 
discarded  or  transformed.) 

2.  In  regard  to  the  teachings  of  Confucius  the  important  question 

is,  “  Is  any  particular  teaching  of  value  for  this  present 
age,  or  not  ?  " 


151 


152 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


3.  Regarding  foolish  and  generally  accepted  methods  of  pro¬ 

cedure  and  beliefs,  we  wish  to  ask,  “  Because  certain 
customs  are  approved,  are  they  therefore  good  ?  ” 
“Because  men  act  in  a  certain  way  am  I  to  act  in  that 
certain  way  ?  ”  “  Does  it  not  seem  possible  that  there 

are  ways  of  activity  other  than  these  that  are  even  more 
beneficial  ?  ” 

4.  Regarding  old  Chinese  learning  and  thought,  our  attitude 

should  also  be  the  critical  attitude  : — 

(a)  Opposition  to  blindness. 

(b)  Opposition  to  intrigue  and  indirection. 

(c)  The  reconstruction  of  old  national  customs. 

There  are  three  steps  in  reconstructing  national  affairs  : — 

(1)  Careful  arrangement  and  systematization  of  these  former 

customs. 

(2)  Careful  investigation  of  each  theory  and  idea  as  to  what 

influence  it  would  have  if  promoted. 

(3)  Use  of  the  scientific  method  of  exact  and  careful 

investigation. 

III.  The  problems  of  investigation. 

1.  Social. 

Social  reconstruction,  emancipation  of  women,  emancipation 
of  men,  purity,  Confucianism,  educational  reform,  marriage,  the 
relation  of  father  and  son,  economic  problems,  labour  problems. 

2.  Governmental. 

The  rule  by  the  people,  anarchy,  internationalism. 

3.  Religious. 

Confucianism,  faith  and  belief,  morality. 

4.  Literary. 

The  literary  revolution,  the  problem  of  the  national  spoken 
language,  novels,  the  language  of  other  nations,  the  abolition 
of  the  use  of  ancient  Chinese  literature,  the  theatre. 

IV.  Methods  of  introducing  these  new  theories. 

The  following  list  of  names  are  given  as  those  from  whose 
writings  valuable  thoughts  could  be  translated  to  guide  this 
New  Thought  Movement : — 


Karl  Marx. 

T.  F.  Wilcox. 


Tolstoy. 

Bertrand  Russell. 

Kropotkin. 

Bakunin. 

Lenin. 


John  Dewey. 

Haeckel. 

James. 


APPENDIX  B 

COMMUNITY  SERVICE 

“  Community  Service  ”  is  a  term  becoming  well  known  in 
Peking  as  denoting  the  work  of  groups  of  people  who  feel  that 
the  uncleanliness,  ignorance,  poverty,  and  suffering  of  their 
community  should  not  remain,  and  who  have  banded  themselves 
together  to  improve  conditions.  Such  groups  have  been  formed 
in  four  sections  of  the  city,  with  a  fifth  ready  to  start. 

The  Teng  Shih  Kou  group  is  probably  best  known  as  the 
first  organized.  Its  recreation  grounds,  where  ninety  boys  and 
girls,  gathered  from  the  streets  round  about,  are  learning  lessons 
of  team  work,  order  and  cleanliness,  together  with  the  sheer 
joy  of  play,  have  become  well  established.  Last  summer  a 
thousand  people  gathered  to  see  health  slides,  while  many  more 
learned  lessons  of  health  from  the  students  who  spoke  to  small 
groups  in  homes  and  shops.  Over  a  hundred  children  in  a 
“  Swat  the  Fly  ”  campaign  have  become  relentless  enemies  of 
the  fly.  A  beginning  has  been  made  in  the  establishment  of  a 
Child  Welfare  station  and  a  Maternity  Clinic,  with  a  visiting 
nurse  in  constant  touch  with  the  homes  of  the  district.  Clothes 
and  food  have  been  given  to  those  in  dire  need,  but  the  emphasis 
is  always  on  constructive  rather  than  immediate  relief.  The 
Loan  Fund  has  helped  to  start  many  men  in  small  businesses. 
Most  successful  of  all  is  the  work  found,  in  connection  with  the 
Peking  Exchange,  for  one  hundred  and  fifty-five  women,  including 
fifty  beggars  from  the  street.  A  good  number  of  women  have 
been  placed  in  other  positions  after  being  taught  to  sew.  The 
children  of  the  workers  are  sent  to  school,  the  sick  in  the  family 
are  taken  care  of,  baths  and  bean  milk  are  provided  free,  and 
close  touch  is  kept  with  the  homes. 

The  West  City  group  has  been  the  pioneer  in  open-air  schools. 
Several  hundred  children  gather  at  an  open  street  corner,  and 
with  no  more  equipment  than  a  chart,  lesson  sheets,  mats,  and 
a  rope  to  mark  the  limits  of  the  school,  they  are  given  their  one 
chance  at  education.  A  full  day  school  with  higher  standards 
is  also  opening  the  door  of  opportunity  to  a  hundred  children. 
Here,  too,  the  people  need  much  help  in  winter  ;  gifts  of  garments 

153 


154 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


and  grain  make  life  possible  for  many.  An  industrial  school  is 
training  women  in  handiwork  and  sending  them  out  to  be  self- 
supporting. 

A  large  number  of  volunteer  workers,  Chinese  and  foreign, 
Christian  and  non-Christian,  teachers,  students,  business  men, 
officials,  women  in  homes,  give  generously  of  their  time  and 
thought  in  planning  and  carrying  out  all  this  work.  In  every 
case  the  initial  impulse  has  come  from  a  group  of  Church  members 
of  the  district  involved,  who  believe  it  is  the  task  of  the  Church 
to  create  a  Christian  community,  and  who  continue  to  have  a 
large  place  in  the  work.  Almost  every  group  employs  a  secretary, 
who,  together  with  the  secretaries  of  the  community  service 
departments  of  the  Young  Men’s  and  Young  Women’s  Christian 
Associations,  assumes  executive  responsibility. 


BOOKS  FOR  FURTHER  READING 


Note. — Where  U.C. M.E.  (United  Council  for  Missionary  Education)  is 
given  as  the  publisher,  the  books  can  be  obtained  from  any  of  the  Missionary 
Societies  (see  addresses  facing  p.  7). 

*  denotes  books  published  in  America  or  out  of  print,  but  obtainable  from 
missionary  libraries,  as  are  also  many  of  the  other  books  named. 

HISTORY 

The  Origin  of  the  Chinese  People.  J.  Ross  (Oliphant,  10s.  6d.) 

The  Civilization  of  China.  H.  A.  Giles  (Williams  &  Norgate, 

2S.  6d.) 

China  and  the  Manchus.  H.  A.  Giles  (Cambridge  University 
Press,  2s.  6d.) 

*The  Middle  Kingdom :  Chinese  Empire  and  its  Inhabitants . 
S.  Wells  Williams. 

*The  Passing  of  the  Dragon.  J.  C.  Keyte. 

*The  Chinese  Empire.  Marshall  Broomhall. 

The  Highway  of  God  (Chapter  II).  K.  Harnett  and  W.  Paton 
(U.C.M.E.,  2S.  6d.) 

China ,  A  Nation  in  the  Making.  F.  D.  Walker  (Wesleyan 
Methodist  Missionary  Society,  3d.) 

(Though  written  in  1914,  this  pamphlet  is  valuable  as  giving 
an  excellent  account  of  the  Revolution.) 

RELIGIONS 

*Three  Religions  of  China.  W.  E.  Soothill. 

Jesus  Christ  and  the  World's  Religions.  W.  Paton  (U.C.M.E.,  is.) 
Confucianism  and  its  Rivals.  H.  A.  Giles  (Williams  &  Norgate, 
6s.) 


155 


156 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


History  of  Chinese  Philosophy.  Suzuki  (Probsthain  &  Co.,  8s.  6d.) 

Philosophy  of  Human  Nature — translated  from  the  Chinese  by 
Dr  Percy  Bruce  (Probsthain  &  Co.,  36s.) 

Chinese  Religion — Confucianism ,  Taoism  and  Buddhism.  M.  H. 
Hughes  (Missionary  Literature  Supply,  3d.) 

EDUCATION  AND  THE  RENAISSANCE  MOVEMENT 

Christian  Education  in  China.  Report  of  Education  Commission 
(Conference  of  Missionary  Societies  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  7s.  6d.) 

China  To-day  Through  Chinese  Eyes.  T.  T.  Lew  and  Others 
(Student  Christian  Movement,  2s.  6d.) 

*  Peking :  A  Social  Survey.  S.  D.  Gamble  (Chapter  VII  and 

Appendix). 

China  Awakened.  M.  T.  Z.  Tyau  (obtainable  from  Probsthain 
&  Co.,  25s.) 

*New  Life  Currents  in  China.  Mary  N.  Gamewell. 

The  Awakening  of  China.  H.  Balme  (All  Missionary  Societies,  3d.) 

POLITICAL,  SOCIAL,  AND  INDUSTRIAL  CONDITIONS 

Modern  China — a  Political  Study.  S.  G.  Cheng  (Clarendon  Press, 
Oxford,  7s.  6d.) 

China  and  Her  Peoples.  L.  E.  Johnston  (U.C.M.E.,  2s.) 

*New  Life  Currents  in  China  (Particularly  Chapter  V).  Mary 
N.  Gamewell. 

Social  Problems  and  the  East.  Frank  Lenwood  (U.C.M.E.,  2s.  6d.) 
Chinese  Mettle.  E.  G.  Kemp  (Hodder  &  Stoughton,  12s.  6d.) 

The  Chinese  as  They  Are.  J.  R.  Saunders  (Fleming  Revell,  6s.) 
Women  Workers  of  the  Orient.  Margaret  E.  Burton  (U.C.M.E.,  2s.) 

*  Notable  Women  of  Modern  China.  Margaret  E.  Burton. 


BOOKS  FOR  FURTHER  READING  157 


EVANGELISM 

* Mission  Problems  and  Methods  in  South  China.  Campbell  Gibson. 

*The  Heathen  Heart.  Campbell  Moody. 

One  of  China's  Scholars.  Mrs  Howard  Taylor  (Morgan  &  Scott 
and  China  Inland  Mission,  is.  6d.) 

*A  Chinese  St  Francis.  Campbell  Brown. 

Among  the  Tribes.  Samuel  Clarke  (Religious  Tract  Society, 
3s.  6d.) 

Everlasting  Pearl.  Miss  Johannsen  (Religious  Tract  Society, 
3s.  6d.) 

In  Quest  of  God.  Marshall  Broomhall  (Religious  Tract  Society, 
3s  6d.  and  2s.  6d.) 

MEDICAL  WORK 

China  and  Modern  Medicine.  H.  Balme  (U.C.M.E.,  3s.  6d.) 

The  Way  of  the  Good  Physician.  H.  T.  Hodgkin  (U.C.M.E.,  2s.) 

Medical  Practice  in  Africa  and  the  East  (Student  Christian 
Movement,  4s.  and  2s.  6d.) 

*New  Life  Currents  in  China.  Mary  N.  Gamewell. 

THE  CHINESE  CHURCH 

China  To-day  Through  Chinese  Eyes.  T.  T.  Lew  and  Others 
(Student  Christian  Movement,  2s.  6d.) 

*New  Life  Currents  in  China.  Mary  N.  Gamewell. 

The  World  and  the  Gospel.  J.  H.  Oldham  (U.C.M.E.,  2s.  6d.) 

The  Bulletin  of  the  National  Christian  Council  of  China  (obtain¬ 
able  from  Bookroom,  Edinburgh  House,  2  Eaton  Gate,  S.W.i 

Articles  in  “  The  Chinese  Recorder  ”  and  “  The  International  Review 
of  Missions .” 


INDEX 


A 

Ancestor  worship,  19-20,  22-3 
Army,  evangelism  in  the,  75-7 


B 

Be  van,  Professor  L.  R.  O.  (quoted), 
41-2,  95 

Bolshevism,  51-2 
Brigands,  9-1 1,  32 
Buddhism,  18-19,  23 

C 

Chang  Po-ling,  112,  135 
Chang  Tso-lin,  12,  31,  33,  ill 
Chang  Yung-hua,  143 
Cheng  Ching-yi,  Dr,  112,  135,  140 
Chinese  Church,  the — 
and  evangelism,  78-9 
city  churches,  135-6 
gifts  of  Chinese  Christians,  136-7 
number  of  Christians,  129-31 
unity,  146-50 

village  Christianity,  96-8,  131-4 
Chinese  Evangelists,  74,  79-8 1 
Chinese  Labour  Corps,  64 
“  Christian  Party,”  129 
Chung-king,  11 

Community  Service,  104-5,  153-4 
Confucianism,  16-17,  23 

D 

Dewey,  Dr,  47  (quoted),  96 
E 

Economic  Revolution,  33-40 
Labour  Unions,  48-50 
158 


Eddy,  Dr  Sherwood,  59 
Education — 
ancient  Chinese,  87-9 
intercourse  between  Government 
and  Christian  Colleges,  ill 
public  spirit  of  students,  12- 1 3 
Renaissance  Movement,  45-8,  151-2 
“returned  students,”  m-13 

(1)  Christian  System 
beginnings  of,  89-90 

English  as  medium  of  instruction, 
100- 1 

extension  work,  81-2,  104-5 

girls’  schools,  107-8 

number  of  pupils,  94 

object  of,  96 

primary  schools,  96-8 

religious  teaching  in  mission  schools, 

97- 102 

results  of,  1 08-11 

secondary  and  vocational  schools, 

98- 103 

teacher-training,  105-7 
universities,  103-4 

(2)  Government  System 
beginnings  of,  90- 1 
financial  difficulties,  95 

girls’  schools,  107-8 
lack  of  religious  teaching,  95 
lecture  halls,  43-4,  104 
number  of  pupils,  94 
primary  schools,  41-2,  93-4 
secondary  schools,  93-4 
student  strikes,  94-5 
summer  schools,  45 
teacher-training,  106-7 
theatres  as  a  medium  of  education, 
45 

universities,  46-8,  92 
Evangelistic  Work  (see  chapter  IV) — 
Chinese  evangelists,  74,  79-81 


INDEX 


159 


Evangelistic  Work — continued — 
flexibility  of  method,  59-61 
“guest  room”  method,  80-1 
in  Mongolia,  66-7 
in  schools,  61-2,  96-102 
institutional  mission  centres,  79-83 
in  the  army,  75-7 
itinerating,  61-3 
magic-lantern  lectures,  72 
mass  meetings,  73-5 
mobile  preaching  and  teaching 
bands,  68-72 
music  in,  65-6,  69 
phonetic  script,  72-3,  121 
points  of  contact,  58-9,  61-3,  66-7 
preaching  to  crowds,  64-5 
village  teachers  as  evangelists,  97-8 
women’s  work,  69-71,  107-8 

F 

Famine  relief  work,  11-12 

Fang,  Rev.  Lui,  143 

Feng  Yii-hsiang,  General,  75-7,  102, 
in,  142,  143 

G 

Government  under  the  Empire,  13-15, 
17,  26 

Government  under  the  Republic, 
14-16,  26-33 

bribery  and  corruption,  30- 1 


H 

Hsii  Chien,  143 
Hu,  Dr,  47,  48 

Hymnology,  need  for  Chinese,  136-7 


/ 

Industrialism,  33-40 
Labour  Unions,  48-50 
need  for  Christianizing,  83-5 
social  welfare  work,  38 
strikes,  35,  51 


K 

Kailan  Mining  Company,  38 
Kang,  65 


L 

Labour  Unions,  48-50 
strikes,  35,  51 
Larsen,  Mr,  66-7 
Lecture  Halls,  43-4,  104 
Lew,  Dr  Timothy,  112 
Liturgy,  need  for  Chinese,  137 
Li  Yuan-hung,  President,  12,  ill 


M 

Magic-lantern  lectures,  72 
Mandarin ,  substituted  for  Wenli ,  47-8 
Mandarins,  15,  20,  26-7 
Mass  meetings,  73-5 
Medical  Missionary  work — 
hospitals,  123-4 

museums  and  preventive  medicine, 
1 17-19 

need  for,  1 1 5,  120- 1 

Peking  Union  Medical  College, 

124-5 

preventing  plague,  119-20 
preventive  teaching  through  schools, 
1 15-17 

public  health  lectures,  119 
Shantung  Christian  University 
Medical  School,  127 
training  Chinese  doctors,  125-8 
Missionary  work — 
aim  of,  14 1,  144-6 
Chinese  evangelists,  74,  79-81 
continued  need  for,  75,  78-9 
educational  work  (see  under  E ) 
evangelistic  work  ( see  under  E ) 
institutional  mission  centres,  79-83 
medical  work  (see  under  M) 
National  Christian  Conference, 
140- 1 

social  changes  and,  56-7,  77-9 
Mobile  preaching  and  teaching  bands, 
68-72 


160 


IN  CHINA  NOW 


Mongolia,  Evangelistic  work  in,  66-7 
Mott,  Dr  John  R.,  59,  75,  143 


N 

National  Christian  Conference,  140- 1 
National  Christian  Council  of  China, 
139,  Mi 

P 

Parliament,  Central,  12,  28-9 
Peking  Express ,  in 
Peking  Government  University,  46-7 
Peking  Union  Medical  College,  124-5 
Peking  University  (Missionary),  46 
Peter,  Dr,  119 
Phonetic  script,  72-3,  121 
Provincial  Governments,  28-9 


R 

Renaissance  Movement,  45-8,  151-2 


.S 

Shantung  Christian  University  Medi¬ 
cal  School,  127 
Social  life — 

under  the  Empire,  24-6,  53-4,  56 
under  the  Republic,  53-7 
Student  Anti-Christian  Movement, 
IIO-II 


Students — 

intercourse  between  Government 
and  Christian  Colleges,  III 
public  spirit  of,  12-13 
‘  ‘  Returned,”  1 1 1  - 1 3 
Summer  Schools,  45 


T 

Taoism,  17-18,  23 
Teachers,  training  of,  105-7 
Theatres  and  education,  45 
Tu-chttns  (military  governors),  29,  52 


W 

Wang  Chung-hui,  143 
Wang,  Dr  C.  T.,  143 
Wenli  replaced  by  Mandarin ,  47-8 
Whitewright,  Rev.  J.  S.,  118 
Women,  work  amongst,  69-71,  107-8 
World’s  Student  Christian  Federation 
Conference,  no 
Wu  Pei-fu,  12,  hi 


V 

Yen,  “Model  Governor”  of  Shansi, 

33 

Yen,  Dr  W.  W.,  75,  142-3 

Yuan  Shi-kai,  President,  28,  31,  36-7 

Yui,  Dr  David,  112,  143 


—  -At 


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Speer  Library 


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